Fossils of small plesiosaurs, long-necked marine reptiles from the age of dinosaurs, first found in 1823, have been found in a 100-million-year-old river system that is now Morocco’s Sahara Desert. This discovery suggests some species of plesiosaur, traditionally thought to be sea creatures, may have lived in freshwater.
Now, scientists from the University of Bath and University of Portsmouth in the UK, and Université Hassan II in Morocco, have reported small plesiosaurs from a Cretaceous-aged River in Africa.
The fossils include bones and teeth from three-metre-long adults and an arm bone from a 1.5-metre-long baby. They hint that these creatures routinely lived and fed in freshwater.
