New insights into an ancient swimming reptile are more than skin deep.
An analysis of a 240-million-year-old fossil, published August 29 in the Swiss Journal of Palaeontology, offers clues to how a reptile similar to those that evolved into the Mesozoic’s iconic and long-necked “sea monsters” — plesiosaurs — adapted to life underwater. The specimen is the first of its kind with fossilized skin and scales.
“I saw the paper when it came out and was amazed by the specimen,” says Sven Sachs, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in Bielefeld, Germany, who was not involved with the study. “Fossilized soft tissue is rarely preserved in [early aquatic reptiles],