Please welcome Franconiasaurus brevispinus!
A new plesiosaur from the early Jurassic of Germany and a important missing link in plesiosaur evolution! Congratulations to the three authors, here the paper for those who haven't seen it
Plesiosaurs are Mesozoic reptiles fully adapted to an aquatic lifestyle. Throughout their evolutionary history exceeding 140 million years p
I have a rather personal connection to this specimen because me and Sven were on a road trip to the EAVP meeting in Munich when we came across this fossil in Bayreuth. It was quite the surprise walking into the collection and finding this, already largely out of the matrix.
It was quite funny to see Sven dive right in and after roughly 15 min of looking at it proclaiming, "pretty sure that's a new genus", I think we had a name for it already on the drive back
Franconiasaurus wasn't an apex predator, that time hadn't come yet for plesiosaurs, but it fills an important evolutionary gap between basal and more derived plesiosaur clades of the Jurassic. Here a little overview of animals that lived with it. This formation, the Jurensismergel, isn't as productive as the underlying Posidonia shale, but it's also a thinner, and less studied formation. Quite a few fossils still await a proper description or a name. These Temnodontosaurus for example.
A little background for my illustration. The Jurensismergel appears to preserve largely a deep water environment but I wanted to show the animal not in a blue void or with some dark sludge near the bottom so I gave it a patch reef to rest on, sourced from some locally available Muschelkalk. The whole presentation is very much inspired by the collection of the Museum in Bayreuth. down to the Temnodontosaurus rostrum jutting out of the ground here. Saurichthys is known from the Jurensismergel but the Dapedium and other fish were burrowed from Posidonia.
when you zoom in you can see crustaceans climbing over and cleaning the Franconiasaurs.
