plesiosaur

plural plesiosaurs

1. Any of the order †Plesiosauria of extinct marine reptiles, from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.First known use c. 1840

   It is the first time in Australia the head and body of an elasmosaur, a type of plesiosaur, has been found in one piece.

   2022 December 6, Rachael Merritt, “Australia's first complete plesiosaur fossil discovered in outback Queensland”, in ABC News

   1 more example

   "Look!" cried Olson. "Would you look at the giraffe comin' up out o' the bottom of the say?" We looked in the direction he pointed and saw a long, glossy neck surmounted by a small head rising above the surface of the river. Presently the back of the creature was exposed, brown and glossy as the water dripped from it. It turned its eyes upon us, opened its lizard-like mouth, emitted a shrill hiss and came for us. The thing must have been sixteen or eighteen feet in length and closely resembled pictures I had seen of restored plesiosaurs of the lower Jurassic.

   1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter IV, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, (please specify |part=I to III), New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927, →OCLC