Email Print Share
November 23, 2012

Juvenile and Mother Plesiosaur (Image 1)

An artist's depiction of how a mother and juvenile plesiosaur probably looked.

The well-preserved fossil skeleton of a juvenile plesiosaur--a marine reptile that swam the waters of the Southern Ocean roughly 70 million years ago--was recovered by an American-Argentine research team in Antarctica. The fossil remains represent one of the most-complete plesiosaur skeletons ever found and is thought to be the best-articulated fossil skeleton ever recovered from Antarctica. The creature would have inhabited Antarctic waters during a period when the Earth and oceans were far warmer than they are today.

This image accompanied NSF press release, "Volcanic Blast Likely Killed and Preserved Juvenile Fossil Plesiosaur Found in Antarctica." [See related image Here.]

Credit: Nicolle Rager Fuller, National Science Foundation

See other images like this on your iPhone or iPad download NSF Science Zone on the Apple App Store.


Images and other media in the National Science Foundation Multimedia Gallery are available for use in print and electronic material by NSF employees, members of the media, university staff, teachers and the general public. All media in the gallery are intended for personal, educational and nonprofit/non-commercial use only.

Images credited to the National Science Foundation, a federal agency, are in the public domain. The images were created by employees of the United States Government as part of their official duties or prepared by contractors as "works for hire" for NSF. You may freely use NSF-credited images and, at your discretion, credit NSF with a "Courtesy: National Science Foundation" notation.

Additional information about general usage can be found in Conditions.

Also Available:
Download the high-resolution JPG version of the image. (1.9 MB)

Use your mouse to right-click (Mac users may need to Ctrl-click) the link above and choose the option that will save the file or target to your computer.