This blog post was written and researched by Kate Whiteway, a Science Communication (Msc) student from the University of Sheffield who is currently undertaking a placement with us here at the Yorkshire Museum.

When the first plesiosaur was found, what did people think it was? At this Year’s Yorkshire Fossil Festival, our team from the Yorkshire Museum asked visitors what they thought a plesiosaur might have looked like, exploring how far we’ve come when reconstructing the animals that left fossils behind.  

The Yorkshire Museum team travelled to Redcar beach alongside other exhibitors of Geology and Earth sciences. We brought fossils of many ancient animals, but particularly marine reptiles. Visitors marvelled over the vertebrae, teeth and paddles of ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and pliosaurs as Sarah King – curator of the natural science collections – spoke to them. But our main attraction was Peter, a reconstructed plesiosaur head, lovingly named after Peter Minister who is thought to have made it. 

Mary Anning was the first to find a complete fossil plesiosaur, it was unlike anything ever seen before. Found at a time when most believed that the Earth had always existed exactly as it was, some even thought that the plesiosaur must have been constructed out of other animal parts. Georges Cuvier, a leading anatomist of the time thought as such but was reassured by Conybeare and William Buckland that the specimen was genuine. 

With no living examples to explain Mary’s discovery, many used other animals to try and describe it. As William Buckland stated in 1836: ‘To the head of a Lizard, it united the teeth of a Crocodile; a neck of enormous length, resembling the body of a Serpent; a trunk and tail having the proportions of an ordinary quadruped, the ribs of a Chameleon, and the paddles of a Whale’. 

 When you read this description, what do you imagine?  

Mary was in fact, with us during the weekend, played by actress Frances Marshall. She described this strange animal to children who then drew what their imaginations told them. This is the first step in unravelling the mystery of any fossil, although the steps after that may become slightly more technical.  

Many ideas of what the plesiosaur looked like came to be after Mary’s discovery. The local newspapers reported that “it approaches nearly to the structure of a turtle”. Henry De La Beche made the first reconstructions of the skeleton after Mary’s original drawings. De La Beche then went on to paint the first Mesozoic reconstruction: Duria Antiquior (a more ancient Dorset) in 1830.  

Duria Antiquoir – Henry De la Beche (1830)

Palaeo-artists since then have worked alongside Palaeontologists to rebuild the animals that once existed where the fossils now lie. Charles Knight was aided by Edward Drinker Cope to illustrate an Elasmosaurus in 1897. But solving the puzzle of how the osteological remains related to the muscles and flesh of an animal isn’t easy. 

 Each new rendition added new insight and detail from new discoveries and more complete fossil findings. Wilhelm Dames discovered what he thought were remnants of soft tissue in a plesiosaur fossil in 1895. His conclusion was that some plesiosaurs must have had tail fins, so his restoration had a diamond shaped tail. However, these remnants were painted over at some point and no other remains have indicated the presence of tail fins. 

Every fossil specimen tells us something, painting a clearer picture of the plesiosaurs. The majority of fossil finds in the UK are made by enthusiasts that hunt for fossils in their free time. Mary Anning found her fossils from the Bue Lias formation in Lyme Regis, but you can find fossils all over the UK. Next time you find yourself walking along the Jurassic coastline in Dorset or a pebbly beach in Whitby, it might be worth looking a little bit closer.