“This is an exciting find because it is the first time an elasmosaur has ever been discovered in Alaska“.
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This June 2015 photo provided by the University of Alaska Museum of the North, shows the dig site where an articulated portion of the spine of a newly discovered elasmosaur fossil is visible at the right of the small plaster jacket extending into the hill in the Talkeetna Mountains in Alaska.
Recently scientists classified the animal as an Elasmosaur (which is a type of plesiosaur).
Elasmosaur, a type of plesiosaur, lived about 70 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous period. This is undoubtedly a truly fascinating proof of ancient life and it opens other pathways of discovery, motivating experts from all over the world to search for similar historical stamps of wildlife. A month later the University of Alaska Museum of the North confirmed the find.
The reptile weighed more than 2,000 kilograms, which makes it among the heaviest and largest known plesiosaurs. Previous studies have reveled them that Plesiosaurs breathed air and gave birth to living babies, instead of eggs, like many dinosaur-related species did. She stated that the person stayed through the age group of old but they can also be not divided into dragons, as they hasn’t walk secure or match other fossil parameters.
The discovery marks the first time one of these creatures has been found in Alaska, although the fossils of another were uncovered in Kansas in 1868. There have been more than a hundred valid species described since 1821.
The elasmosaur featured extremely long necks and long, paddle-like limbs that would have enabled them to swim freely underwater, according to the museum’s marine fossil expert and earth science curator Patrick Druckenmiller, who was quoted in the museum announcement as comparing the ancient dinosaur and the mythical Loch Ness monster that is rumored to live in the Scottish lake.
Anchorage-based fossil collector Curvin Metzler came across the vertebrae of the elasmosaur fossil protruding from a bluff. “I recognized it as a vertebra from the base of the animal’s neck and wanted to visit the site to see if we could find more”.
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Druckenmiller was very excited, apparently, when Metzler contacted him about the fossil, and immediately jumped at the chance of possibly unearthing the whole skeleton of the 25-feet long creature.
