Isle of Raasay plesiosaur (Jurassic of the United Kingdom)

Where: Scotland, United Kingdom (57.4° N, 6.0° W: paleocoordinates 43.9° N, 1.7° E)

• coordinate based on political unit

• small collection-level geographic resolution

When: Scalpa Sandstone Formation, Pliensbachian (190.8 - 182.7 Ma)

• Middle Liassic (Jurassic) Scalpa Sandstone Formation

•Is Pliensbachian (D. Martill, pers. comm. March 2013)

Environment/lithology: marine; concretionary, calcareous sandstone

• Most of the specimen is enclosed in a calcareous concretion

Size class: macrofossils

Collected by James Green, a student at the niversity of Leicester in 1984

• Most of the specimen is enclosed in a calcareous concretion and will take some time to prepare; but hopefully it will be possible to free the bones from their matrix.

Primary reference: D. Martill. 1985. Plesiosaur discovery in Scotland. Geology Today 1:162 [R. Benson/R. Benson]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 139597: authorized by Roger Benson, entered by Roger Benson on 14.02.2013

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

Reptilia
 Plesiosauria - Elasmosauridae
Elasmosauridae sp. Cope 1869 elasmosaur
The specimen discovered by Green includes fragments of the skull, with teeth, numerous vertebrae, ribs and pieces of the shoulder girdle... the specimen is one of the long-necked plesiosaurs called elasmosaurs, which had small heads on a long flexible neck