The unusual dinosaur, about 5.5 meters long, had four fins and a short tail. He plowed the vastness of the ancient oceans about 165 million years ago.
Experts at the University of Oxford Museum of Natural History are examining the long-necked fossil skeleton in hopes of discovering its place in the evolutionary history of the Earth. According to preliminary information, it represents a completely new species of prehistoric sea monsters, reports The Daily Mail.
The remains of a reptile, which researchers have already named Eve, were found in a quarry in Peterborough, in the same place where archaeologists recently discovered the best preserved Bronze Age settlement. Experts unearthed over 600 skeletal elements of the ancient creature and spent about 400 hours cleaning and restoring them.
They found that the dinosaur had a neck that was about 2.4 meters long, a barrel-shaped body, four flippers and a short tail. Scientists have not yet studied the skull of the creature, because it is still in a dense layer of clay. Archaeologists are afraid of damage, so the extraction process was delayed. But scanning the skull has already shown that its structure may indicate that we are talking about a previously unknown to science ancient animal of the plesiosaur family. They lived in the oceans for over 140 million years during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
The remains of a plesiosaur were first discovered in November 2014. The discovery was made by Dr. Carl Harrington, an Oxford-based paleontologist who was involved in excavating a clay quarry in the Peterborough area.