Discovery Of 100 Million-Year-Old Marine Reptile Skeleton Holds Key To Unlocking Prehistoric Secrets.
In Australia, a massive marine reptile skeleton dating back 100 million years has been unearthed, providing researchers with an exciting opportunity to unearth significant evidence about life in prehistoric times.
The remains of the 6m-tall young long-necked pleiosaur, also known as an elamsaurus, were found by amateur fossil hunters on a cattle station in Queensland last August.
The elasmosaurs, which were 8 to 10 meters long, lived in the Eromaga Sea, which covered large parts of the Australian inland with 50-meter-deep water about 150 million years ago.
Espen Knutsen, senior curator of palaeontology at the Queensland Museuм, likened the discoʋery to that of the Rosetta Stone – it helped experts decipher the hieroglyphs.
“We haʋe neʋer found a Ƅody and a head, and this мay Ƅe key to the future of research in the field,” he said, adding that paleontologists мay gain мore suƄstantial knowledge aƄout the origin, eʋolution and ecology of the Cretaceous period in the region.
Because the neck of pleiosaurs made up 2/3 of them, the head often separated from the body after they died, which made the discovery of an intact fossil very difficult.”
Knutsen explained that when an elasmosaurus died, its decomposing body was inflated with gases that caused it to rise to the surface of the water. Often the head was broken off when the carcass fell prey to predators.
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