The fossil record of land dinosaurs in New Zealand is poor, with only a few bones, but the collection of ancient extinct marine reptiles is remarkable, including shark-like mosasaurs and long-necked plesiosaurs.
Plesiosaurs first appeared in the fossil record about 200 million years ago and died out along with the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
He is best known for the hypothetical but fascinating idea, suggested by British scientist Sir Peter Scott, that the fictional Loch Ness monster was actually a plesiosaurs That somehow wiped out all other giant reptiles and remained unknown throughout human history.
In a recent research project, we used medical CT imaging to scan plesiosaur fossils collected in New Zealand in 1872.
The scans revealed a new level of detail, confirming that plesiosaurs mostly swam with their heads, unlike the Loch Ness creature, and show a close link between New Zealand fossils and South American specimens from 70 million years ago .
In 1872, director of the Canterbury Museum Julius von Hastow Hired self-taught Scottish geologist Alexander McKay to conduct geological surveys and collect fossils.
Von Haast had heard that explorer and amateur scientist Thomas Cockburn-Hood Important reptile fossils were discovered in the upper Vaipara Gorge, in the Canterbury area.
Cockburn-Hood described this area as a “saurian bed,” and we now know that marine sediments preserved fossils from 70 million years ago.
Mackay went to Waipara during the winter of 1872, and he was resoundingly successful, collecting several partial skeletons and hundreds of bones from marine reptiles.
This material contained two rather indistinct, compressed, semi-circular groups of bones. These sat in the storerooms of the Canterbury Museum, unidentified and trapped inside the concrete they had been excavated for more than 120 years.
It will take time to understand the importance of the fossil until the late 1990s. Museum builder and renowned fossil collector Al Mannering and his colleagues prepared these two unaffected fossils by tearing apart the stone to reveal the bones contained in the rocks.
The English scientist Arthur Crookshank believed that these fossils were remarkable and probably resembled plesiosaur material he had seen from South America.
In 2004, Canterbury Museum geology curators Norton Hiller and Mannering published a paper in which they suggested the two groups of bones, the size of soccer balls, were actually two sides of the skull of the same animal – a remarkably plesiosaur. Similar to South America.
In 2014, internationally renowned marine reptile expert Rodrigo Otero ,Universidad de Chile) and Jose O’Gorman (Argentina’s Museo de la Plata) visited New Zealand and examined the samples. He concluded that Hiller and Mannering were right.
The two halves were in fact from the same animal and Vipara fossils were similar to a group of plesiosaurs known so far only from Chile and Argentina.
He completely described the specimens from the Canterbury Museum and gave them Alexandronectes zeelandiensis, the Latin scientific name for Alexander’s swimmer Zeelandiae.
Science and technology moves forward and O’Gorman’s team seeks to confirm the evolutionary relationships of Alexandronectes zeelandiensis using the latest techniques.
In 2019, I took two fossils to the hospital for a CT scan using the latest dual energy CT scanner at St George’s Radiology in Christchurch. The results were extraordinary, showing previously unseen features of anatomy.
Without CT scanning technology, these details could only be seen by destroying the fossil.
We examined the creature’s inner ear and concluded, based on the orientation of the ear, that it maintains a posture where its head is held perpendicular to the body or slightly below the body (not like Lach Ness monster fans Will keep up, up in the air like a sock puppet).
We also saw a feature known as stapes, which until then had not even been seen in plesiosaurs. The stapes is a small umbrella-shaped bone in the middle ear that transmits vibrations from the eardrum to the inner ear.
This work allowed us to conclude that Alexandronectes zeelandiensis was an unusual plesiosaur.
It belonged to a unique group of southern-hemisphere plesiosaurs now known as Aristonectinae. This group was part of the plesiosaur family known as elasmosaurs. They . was the last experiment in plesiosaur evolution, with the longest neck of all plesiosaurs.
Plesiosaurs first appeared in the fossil record about 200 million years ago and died out along with the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
He is best known for the hypothetical but fascinating idea, suggested by British scientist Sir Peter Scott, that the fictional Loch Ness monster was actually a plesiosaurs That somehow wiped out all other giant reptiles and remained unknown throughout human history.
In a recent research project, we used medical CT imaging to scan plesiosaur fossils collected in New Zealand in 1872.
The scans revealed a new level of detail, confirming that plesiosaurs mostly swam with their heads, unlike the Loch Ness creature, and show a close link between New Zealand fossils and South American specimens from 70 million years ago .
In 1872, director of the Canterbury Museum Julius von Hastow Hired self-taught Scottish geologist Alexander McKay to conduct geological surveys and collect fossils.
Von Haast had heard that explorer and amateur scientist Thomas Cockburn-Hood Important reptile fossils were discovered in the upper Vaipara Gorge, in the Canterbury area.
Cockburn-Hood described this area as a “saurian bed,” and we now know that marine sediments preserved fossils from 70 million years ago.
Mackay went to Waipara during the winter of 1872, and he was resoundingly successful, collecting several partial skeletons and hundreds of bones from marine reptiles.
This material contained two rather indistinct, compressed, semi-circular groups of bones. These sat in the storerooms of the Canterbury Museum, unidentified and trapped inside the concrete they had been excavated for more than 120 years.
It will take time to understand the importance of the fossil until the late 1990s. Museum builder and renowned fossil collector Al Mannering and his colleagues prepared these two unaffected fossils by tearing apart the stone to reveal the bones contained in the rocks.
The English scientist Arthur Crookshank believed that these fossils were remarkable and probably resembled plesiosaur material he had seen from South America.
In 2004, Canterbury Museum geology curators Norton Hiller and Mannering published a paper in which they suggested the two groups of bones, the size of soccer balls, were actually two sides of the skull of the same animal – a remarkably plesiosaur. Similar to South America.
In 2014, internationally renowned marine reptile expert Rodrigo Otero ,Universidad de Chile) and Jose O’Gorman (Argentina’s Museo de la Plata) visited New Zealand and examined the samples. He concluded that Hiller and Mannering were right.
The two halves were in fact from the same animal and Vipara fossils were similar to a group of plesiosaurs known so far only from Chile and Argentina.
He completely described the specimens from the Canterbury Museum and gave them Alexandronectes zeelandiensis, the Latin scientific name for Alexander’s swimmer Zeelandiae.
Science and technology moves forward and O’Gorman’s team seeks to confirm the evolutionary relationships of Alexandronectes zeelandiensis using the latest techniques.
In 2019, I took two fossils to the hospital for a CT scan using the latest dual energy CT scanner at St George’s Radiology in Christchurch. The results were extraordinary, showing previously unseen features of anatomy.
Without CT scanning technology, these details could only be seen by destroying the fossil.
We examined the creature’s inner ear and concluded, based on the orientation of the ear, that it maintains a posture where its head is held perpendicular to the body or slightly below the body (not like Lach Ness monster fans Will keep up, up in the air like a sock puppet).
We also saw a feature known as stapes, which until then had not even been seen in plesiosaurs. The stapes is a small umbrella-shaped bone in the middle ear that transmits vibrations from the eardrum to the inner ear.
This work allowed us to conclude that Alexandronectes zeelandiensis was an unusual plesiosaur.
It belonged to a unique group of southern-hemisphere plesiosaurs now known as Aristonectinae. This group was part of the plesiosaur family known as elasmosaurs. They . was the last experiment in plesiosaur evolution, with the longest neck of all plesiosaurs.
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