page_title: Timeline of plesiosaur research
section_title: 1920s
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of plesiosaur research / 20th century / 1920s
caption_attribution_description: Kronosaurus queenslandicus
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: 1922
  Andrews described the new species Leptocleidus superstes.
  Sternberg observed that being contained in the stomach of a mosasaur might have helped ensure the preservation of the polycotylid now known as USNM 9468 by protecting it from scavenging sharks.
  1923
  Huene described the species now known as Hydrorion brachypterygius.
  1924
  Heber Longman described Kronosaurus queenslandicus based on the jaw fragment found there by Andrew Crombie in 1899.
  1926
  George F. Sternberg discovered a third specimen of Dolichorhynchops osborni in Kansas.
  1929
  More Kronosaurus fossils were discovered in central Queensland near the site of the type specimen's discovery.
caption: Kronosaurus
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