Plesiosaur skin paper

[DinoToyForum]

Hot off the press, a new research paper describing skin in a plesiosaur: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(25)00001-6

[Sim]

Finally Seeleyosaurus's tail fin can be seen again after the paint that covered it was removed!  It looks like a vertical one to me.

[DinoToyForum]

Finally Seeleyosaurus's tail fin can be seen again after the paint that covered it was removed!  It looks like a vertical one to me.

To me, too.

[Faelrin]

Having a bit of brain fog today, so can't really read the paper today, but does this new specimen assigned to any species or genus yet? Really cool to see more skin from these beautiful marine reptiles. I look forward to the new reconstructions on based on these findings.

[DinoToyForum]

Having a bit of brain fog today, so can't really read the paper today, but does this new specimen assigned to any species or genus yet? Really cool to see more skin from these beautiful marine reptiles. I look forward to the new reconstructions on based on these findings.

This paper doesn't include a systematic palaeontology section, as far as I can see, but I know there's a separate descriptive paper in the works for the specimen, which will surely ID it.

[Concavenator]

Does this mean that depictions of long-necked plesiosaurs without a tail fluke, like Safari's Elasmosaurus or Kaiyodo's Plesiosaurus, are now outdated? After all, and unless I'm missing something else, it was the discovery of a tail fluke in a Prognathodon specimen what made us realize that mosasaurs had tail flukes (and rendering previous depictions without one obsolete).

[DinoToyForum]

Does this mean that depictions of long-necked plesiosaurs without a tail fluke, like Safari's Elasmosaurus or Kaiyodo's Plesiosaurus, are now outdated? After all, and unless I'm missing something else, it was the discovery of a tail fluke in a Prognathodon specimen what made us realize that mosasaurs had tail flukes (and rendering previous depictions without one obsolete).

Not necessarily. Plesiosaurs were a diverse group with a 150 million year + range occupying many different niches. Different long-necked species could have had different tail soft tissues.

[Concavenator]

Does this mean that depictions of long-necked plesiosaurs without a tail fluke, like Safari's Elasmosaurus or Kaiyodo's Plesiosaurus, are now outdated? After all, and unless I'm missing something else, it was the discovery of a tail fluke in a Prognathodon specimen what made us realize that mosasaurs had tail flukes (and rendering previous depictions without one obsolete).

Not necessarily. Plesiosaurs were a diverse group with a 150 million year + range occupying many different niches. Different long-necked species could have had different tail soft tissues.

Good to know, thanks! It would've been a pity for those beautiful plesiosaur figures to become outdated, glad it isn't the case. 

[DinoToyForum]

Here's the follow-up systematic description of the new plesiosaur specimen: https://peerj.com/articles/18960/
TLDR It's a new specimen of Plesiopterys (which is a valid taxon, distinct from Seeleyosaurus).

[Halichoeres]

Glad to see that out, thanks for posting!

[Faelrin]

Not one I was familiar with. I like how I went to look it up, and got a pic of you from your site. Not the right plesiosaur though, lol. The caption on your site clearly says its Meyerasaurus.

Knowing it's from an established genus is always cool to see though as it helps expand our understanding of them, and now it makes me want a figure of one, especially since we have some skin from it.

[BlueKrono]

I just reread the first article and noticed the specimen was uncovered in Germany in 1940. How lucky are we that it survived the tumult of that time and place to grant us such groundbreaking discoveries in the 2020's?