{"id":28224,"date":"2025-05-28T11:18:57","date_gmt":"2025-05-28T15:18:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/?p=28224"},"modified":"2025-06-19T10:27:07","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T14:27:07","slug":"marshall-researchers-officially-identify-new-genus-of-plesiosaur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/2025\/05\/marshall-researchers-officially-identify-new-genus-of-plesiosaur\/","title":{"rendered":"Marshall researchers officially identify new genus of plesiosaur"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Marshall University researchers, working with an international investigative team from Chile and Canada, have identified a group of fossils as belonging to a new genus of sea creature, unlike any previously known.<\/p>\n<p>Traskasaura sandrae, officially named in the new study, was a 39-foot-long, long-necked creature with large, sharp and robust teeth well-suited for crushing. It also could attack prey above by virtue of its elongated neck.<\/p>\n<p>Published in the peer-reviewed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/full\/10.1080\/14772019.2025.2489938\">Journal of Systematic Paleontology<\/a>, the findings reveal that Traskasaura displayed a unique combination of both primitive and advanced traits not seen in any other elasmosaur, a genus of plesiosaur.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPlesiosaur fossils have been known for decades in British Columbia,\u201d explains lead author F. Robin O\u2019Keefe, a Marshall biology professor who is an acknowledged expert on marine reptiles from the age of dinosaurs. \u201cHowever, the identity of the animal that left the fossils has remained a mystery, even as it was declared BC\u2019s provincial fossil in 2023. Our new research published today finally solves this mystery.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>O\u2019Keefe and his Marshall team have published widely in journals including Science, Nature and Systematic Biology. For more information on their work and the Department of Biological Sciences, visit <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/biology\/\">Biological Sciences &#8211; Marshall University.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marshall University researchers, working with an international investigative team from Chile and Canada, have identified a group of fossils as belonging to a new genus of sea creature, unlike any previously known. Traskasaura sandrae, officially named in the new study, was a 39-foot-long, long-necked creature with large, sharp and robust teeth well-suited for crushing. It [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":239,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cos","category-news-releases"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/239"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28224"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28329,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28224\/revisions\/28329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}