Nimble swimmers with crushing bites and bodies built for speed,
pliosaurs dominated the oceans of the Jurassic and Cretaceous.
The largest known specimen, unearthed in Norway in 2008,
measured 50 feet in length and boasted teeth the size of
cucumbers. The newly described skull, found by a local fossil
collector in southwest England in 1994, is roughly 7 feet long,
meaning the original animal stretched 30 feet, said Judyth
Sassoon, a University of Bristol scientist who led the project
and co-wrote the paper. It remained in the collection of the
Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery following its discovery.
“When I saw it for the first time three years ago, I was
instantly fascinated by some of the unusual markings on the
lower and upper jaws,” Sassoon recalled. “At the time the fossil
still needed to be extracted from the clay matrix in which it
was discovered, and the museum staff kindly helped with that
daunting task. Once the fossil was cleaned up, this pliosaur’s
unique life story started to make sense.” Ten