A 100-million year old fossil has been excavated in Queensland in a first-of-its-kind discovery for Australia.
The fossil includes the head and body of an elamosaur, a type of ocean-going plesiosaur that existed alongside dinosaurs.
It was found by western Queensland station owner Cassandra and two of her friends Sally and Cynthia, who hunt for fossils together.
Queensland Museum Network senior scientist and Curator of Palaeontology, Dr Espen Knutsen, who led the subsequent field trip to excavate the fossil, said this would be the first known head and body of an Australian elasmosaur to be held in a museum collection.
“We were extremely excited when we saw this fossil – it is like the Rosetta Stone of marine palaeontology as it may hold the key to unravelling the diversity and evolution of long-necked plesiosaurs in Cretaceous Australia,” Knutsen said.
“Because these plesiosaurs were two-thirds neck, often the head would be separated from the body after death, which makes it very hard to find a fossil preserving both together, so we are using CT scanning to give us an insight into these magnificent animals.”