Blue Collar Scientist

Researchers at the University of Oslo Natural History Museum have announced the discovery of an enormous marine reptile - a 50-foot (15 meter) pliosaur.

The pliosaur was found in the arctic island chain of Svalbard (the BBC reports it was found on Spitzbergen) by a “team of Norwegian paleontologists and volunteers from the University of Oslo Natural History Museum” and their principal investigator, Jørn Hurum. But at least one Alaskan, Patrick Druckenmiller, was involved with the find. A plesiosaur specialist at the University of Alaska Museum, he’s quoted in the press release as saying:

“Although we didn’t get the entire skeleton, we found many of the most important parts, including portions of the skull, teeth, much of the neck and back, the shoulder girdle, and a nearly complete forelimb (paddle)” said Druckenmiller, “Amazingly, the paddle alone is nearly 10 feet long.”

In a bit of a departure from established taxonomy practices and the usual reticince to announce such things before a paper has passed peer review, the PI says:

“From the bones we have finished stabilizing so far this absolutely looks like a new species” Jørn Hurum tells enthusiastically.

The fossil is 150 million years old, putting it in the late Jurassic.

One of the things interesting to me about this find is how many significant fossils are coming out of the arctic or nearctic in the last decade or so. Finds like Tiktaalik roseae, the Axel Heiberg champsosaurs, the Victoria Island acritarchs, the Colville River finds, the Bathurst Island vascular plants, Greenland’s Ichthyostega, and so on. This could be for any or all of a number of reasons:

• The arctic is well-mapped geologically, mainly by the oil companies, allowing paleontologists to conduct well-planned digs at carefully selected locations.
• More easily accessible areas are already pretty well prospected.
• Arctic areas don’t have a lot of trees on the ground to interfere with access to fossils.
• Until relatively recently, access was prohibitively expensive, especially if you wanted to transport fossils out.
• In this case, the Svalbard Tourism Board made the prospect of a working vacation irresistable.

Anyway, now we can chalk up another interesting arctic find. According to the BBC, they’ve done a literature search, and this is apparently the biggest pliosaur ever.