” The size price quote on the BBC back in 1999 was exaggerated, and now we have some evidence that is a lot more dependable after a serendipitous discovery of four massive vertebrates.”
Teacher Martills co-author, Megan Jacobs, was photographing an ichthyosaur skeleton at Abingdon County Hall Museum, while Dave checked out drawers of fossils. He was and discovered a large vertebra enjoyed find the curator had 3 more of them in storage.
The vertebrae are clearly identifiable as being carefully associated to a Pliosaurus types or comparable animal. Pliosaurs resembled plesiosaurs, however with a larger lengthened head, comparable to a crocodile, and a much shorter neck. They had 4 flippers, which acted as effective paddles to move them through water, and a reasonably short tail.
After conducting topographic scans, Professor Martill and associates computed this Late Jurassic marine reptile could have grown to between 9.8 and 14.4 meters long.
He stated: “We know these pliosaurs were really terrifying animals swimming in the seas that covered Oxfordshire 145-152 million years back. They had an enormous skull with huge protruding teeth like daggers– as huge, if not bigger than a T. rex, and certainly more powerful.
” They were at the top of the marine food chain and probably preyed on ichthyosaurs, long-necked plesiosaurs, and perhaps even smaller marine crocodiles, simply by biting them in half and taking pieces off them. We understand they were massacring smaller sized marine reptiles due to the fact that you can see bite marks in ichthyosaur bones in examples on screen in The Etches Collection in Dorset.”
The vertebrae were initially found throughout temporary excavations at Warren Farm in the River Thames Valley in Oxfordshire and originate from the Kimmeridge Clay Formation. This deposit is Late Jurassic in age, around 152 million years of ages.
Teacher Martill included: “Its terrific to prove there was indeed a genuinely enormous pliosaur species in the Late Jurassic seas. Not yet on a par with the claims made for Liopleurodon in the renowned BBC Television series Walking With Dinosaurs, it wouldnt shock me if one day we discover some clear proof that this monstrous types was even bigger.”
Recommendation: “A genuinely enormous pliosaur (Reptilia, Sauropterygia) from the Kimmeridge Clay Formation (Upper Jurassic, Kimmeridgian) of England” by David M. Martill, Megan L. Jacobs and Roy E. Smith, 10 May 2023, Proceedings of the Geologists Association.DOI: 10.1016/ j.pgeola.2023.04.005.
An artists impression of the pliosaur. Credit: Megan Jacobs, University of Portsmouth
More than two years ago, the representation of a 25-meter-long Liopleurodon in the BBCs documentary series, Walking with Dinosaurs, instigated fervent conversations about the true size of this pliosaur. The representation was normally considered as excessively exaggerated, with the more accepted theory recommending an adult Liopleurodon would have measured simply over six meters.
This speculation was expected to continue, nevertheless, a serendipitous finding in an Oxfordshire museum has actually now spurred paleontologists from the University of Portsmouth to release a term paper recommending that a comparable types could reach a staggering length of 14.4 meters, twice the size of a killer whale.
Professor David Martill from the University of Portsmouths School of the Environment, Geography and Geosciences, stated: “I was a consultant for the BBCs pilot program Cruel Sea and I hold my hands up– I got the size of Liopleurodon horrendously wrong. I based my computations on some fragmentary material that recommended a Liopleurodon might grow to a length of 25 meters, but the proof was little and it triggered a lot of debate at the time.
