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plesiosaur

UK/ˈpliːsiəsɔːɹ/US/ˈpliːsiəsɔːɹ/
nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,524 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: plesiosaurs

A plesiosaur is a long-necked swimming reptile of ancient seas. A plesiosaur fossil, the plesiosaur's neck, plesiosaur remains.

It is not a dinosaur, since it belongs to a separate group of marine reptiles, and it swam with four flippers rather than a tail. Mary Anning found the first complete one on the Dorset coast in 1823.

Kim Alaniz · CC BY 2.0

Definitions of plesiosaur

  1. 1nounplesiosaurA long-necked swimming reptile of ancient seas.C1

    “The museum's plesiosaur has a long neck, a small head and large flippers.”

plesiosaur is a reptile.

Where it comes from

Named in 1824 from Greek plesios, near, plus sauros, lizard, since it seemed nearer an ordinary reptile than its relatives.

  1. Translingual

    Plesiosaurus

  2. English, today

    plesiosaur

Backformation of Translingual Plesiosaurus, named by William Conybeare and Henry De la Beche in 1824 because plesiosaurs were more like a normal reptile than Ichthyosaurus, which had been found in the same rock strata a few years earlier. Surface derivation, plesio + saur.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Dinosaurs & Prehistory

Practise this word

plesiosaur in the wild

  • The Plesiosauria or plesiosaurs are an order or clade of extinct Mesozoic marine reptiles, belonging to the Sauropterygia.

    Plesiosaur

  • According to Oskar Kuhn, Termatosaurus is a plesiosaur (of the Rhomaleosauridae), while according to other sources, it is a phytosaur.

    Termatosaurus

  • Hydrorion (meaning 'water hunter') is a genus of plesiosaur from the Toarcian Age of the Lower Jurassic.

    Hydrorion

  • Otschev's father, Georgy Otschev, a geodesist who died shortly before Otschev published the description in 1976) is an extinct genus of plesiosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Russia.

    Georgiasaurus

  • The first scientifically documented plesiosaur fossils were discovered during the early 19th century by Mary Anning.

    Timeline of plesiosaur research

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.