Beautiful Plesiosaur Vert

[LiamL]

I found this beautiful Plesiosaur Vert today.

Can any plesiosaur experts tell me roughly where this would fit onto the skeleton? Tail, neck ect.

 

Found at Whitby on the Yorkshire Coast. The vert required very minimal prepwork. I just penned out the neural holes and had a quick acid dip for 10 mins.

 

Edited May 10 by LiamL

[Mike from North Queensland]

Photos are not showing signs of the scaring from where the protrusions for the rib attachments were.

couple of possible points are either high or low - low neck high body 

[Aman]

I concur with the previous answer. No sign of rib facets, or where they might have been torn off. Could be either the very base of the neck or the start of the body, personally I would lean more towards base of the neck due to how far the neural arch extends along the centrum (since this is seen in Microcleidus), but this varies a lot between different plesiosaur species so it's difficult to be certain. You can look on this website to get a good overview of determining the positions of plesiosaur verts along the body.

 

Nice find!

Edited May 12 by Aman
Spelling mistake

[pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon]

On 5/10/2024 at 11:47 PM, LiamL said:

 

When I look at the above two photographs, I see a notch and pit halfway up the vertebra, that I assume - if mirrored on the other side of the centrum as well - to be a rather water-worn parapophysis. This provides us with a excellent point of reference if we check the position of this rib-attachment site with the below diagram from Noé, Taylor and Gómez-Pérez (2017; fig. 6):

 

 

That is, for me your vertebra falls within the range marked by E, making it a pectoral vertebra.

[LiamL]

4 hours ago, pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon said:

 

When I look at the above two photographs, I see a notch and pit halfway up the vertebra, that I assume - if mirrored on the other side of the centrum as well - to be a rather water-worn parapophysis. This provides us with a excellent point of reference if we check the position of this rib-attachment site with the below diagram from Noé, Taylor and Gómez-Pérez (2017; fig. 6):

 

 

That is, for me your vertebra falls within the range marked by E, making it a pectoral vertebra.

 

Excellent detective work there.

i didnt even spot those pits until you just mentioned them. 
 

I have attached an imagine of the other side of the vert, and i think i see the same markings there.

[pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon]

2 hours ago, LiamL said:

I have attached an imagine of the other side of the vert, and i think i see the same markings there.

 

They're broader, but, yeah, seems to be a parapophysis...