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Before Texas was what it is known today, it was a vast sea full of marine reptiles. Now, one of those creatures has been found - its remains, that is - during construction work. Steve Schliesing, a mechanical engineer and fossil enthusiast, was digging in the dirt when he came across the fossil.
What he found were fossils of a plesiosaur, a tremendous marine predator that lived in the Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago. Experts from the Perot Museum of Nature and Science explained that it is one of the most complete skeletons ever found.
"These animals lived and died, and their remains are preserved in your backyard. Wherever there is development, a project, clearing or excavation, things like that in North Texas, it is very likely that you will find or be exposed to some fragment of our natural heritage," said Dr. Ron Tykoski, an expert in vertebrate paleontology at the museum, in a statement to Dallas Morning News.
What was the skeleton like?
The skeleton was partially fossilized, about 3.6 meters long, and had bite marks on its body and fins, which experts say were attacks by other marine animals, such as sharks.
"When we get better views of the anatomy, we'll see if we can identify the species of plesiosaur," Tykoski said. "I didn't know how potentially significant it was. I mean, I knew how important it was to preserve something like that for science. It's something I never dreamed I would do," added Schliesing.
The fossil preparation team at @PerotMuseum has been very busy! Here's the progress so far on a small block of plesiosaur tail vertebrae we collected near Celina, Texas, last month. I'm looking forward to opening the large block with most of the skeleton inside! #FossilFriday," Tykoski wrote in a tweet.
However, this is not the first plesiosaur discovery in Texas in recent years, as in 2023, scientists from the University of Texas at Austin unearthed the bones of a similar aquatic creature in the Malone Mountains.