page_title: Timeline of plesiosaur research
section_title: 1890s
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of plesiosaur research / 19th century / 1890s
caption_attribution_description: Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre Morden Manitoba Canada
context_page_description: This timeline of plesiosaur research is a chronologically ordered list of important fossil discoveries, controversies of interpretation, taxonomic revisions, and cultural portrayals of plesiosaurs, an order of marine reptiles that flourished during the Mesozoic Era. The first scientifically documented plesiosaur fossils were discovered during the early 19th century by Mary Anning. Plesiosaurs were actually discovered and described before dinosaurs. They were also among the first animals to be featured in artistic reconstructions of the ancient world, and therefore among the earliest prehistoric creatures to attract the attention of the lay public. Plesiosaurs were originally thought to be a kind of primitive transitional form between marine life and terrestrial reptiles. However, now plesiosaurs are recognized as highly derived marine reptiles descended from terrestrial ancestors.
  Early researchers thought that plesiosaurs laid eggs like most reptiles. They commonly imagined plesiosaurs crawling up beaches and burying eggs like turtles. However, later opinion shifted towards the idea that plesiosaurs gave live birth and never went on dry land.
context_section_description: 1890
  In an article published in the New York Herald, Marsh brought up Cope's anatomic reversal of Elasmosaurus.
  E. P. West excavated a skull and partial neck belonging to the elasmosaur that would come to be named Styxosaurus snowii. The specimen is now catalogued as KUVP 1301.
  Williston described the species now known as Styxosaurus snowii.
  1892
  Seeley described the species now known as Muraenosaurus beloclis.
  1893
  Marsh described the new species Pantosaurus striatus.
  Charles H. Sternberg obtained two large elasmosaur vertebrae that would later serve as the type specimen of Elasmosaurus sternbergi. The specimen is now catalogued as KUVP 1312.
  F. W. Cragin discovered a partial plesiosaur skeleton and associated gastroliths in what is now recognized as the Kiowa Shale. This specimen is now catalogued as KUVP 1305 and would later be named Plesiosaurus mudgei.
  Williston argued that plesiosaurs ingested gastroliths only accidentally or to relieve "food craving[s]". However, he also observed that the rocks used as gastroliths were more similar to rocks 400–500 miles away in Iowa or the Black Hills of South Dakota than those of the local geology.
  1894
  Cragin described the new species Plesiosaurus mudgei for KUVP 1305.
  1895
  Dames described the species now known as Seeleysaurus guilelmiimperatoris.
  1897
  With guidance from Edward Drinker Cope, paleo-artist Charles R. Knight illustrated an Elasmosaurus platyurus eating a fish. The elasmosaur's neck was erroneously looped into an anatomically impossible figure 8 configuration that evoked the image of "a python grasping at its prey".
  1898
  Knight described the new species Megalneusaurus rex.
  1899
  A man named Andrew Crombie discovered a fossil jaw fragment with six teeth in Queensland, Australia. The specimen would become the type for the genus Kronosaurus.
caption: Skull and neck of Styxosaurus snowii. S. snowii was described by Williston in 1890.
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