page_title: Timeline of plesiosaur research
section_title: 1860s
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of plesiosaur research / 19th century / 1860s
caption_attribution_description: Pliosaur
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: 1863
  Carte and Bailey described the species now known as Rhomaleosaurus cramptoni.
  1864
  Jules Verne depicted a relict plesiosaur's defeat in combat against an ichthyosaur in Journey to the Center of the Earth.
  1865
  Owen described the species now known as Eretmosaurus rugosus and Microcleidus homalospondylus.
  Seeley described the species now known as Microcleidus macropterus.
  Owen described the species now known as Archaeonectrus rostratus.
  1867
  An army surgeon named Dr. Theophilus Turner discovered the fossils of a large animal in the Pierre Shale of Kansas, USA. The remains represented the first nearly complete plesiosaur specimen from North America. Turner gave some of its vertebrae to a member of the Union Pacific Railroad's survey named John LeConte. LeConte sent the vertebrae to Edward Drinker Cope for study. Cope recognized the find as a significant plesiosaur discovery and wrote to Turner asking him to excavate and ship the fossils to him.
  March, mid
  Cope erected the new genus and species Elasmosaurus platyurus for the fossils sent by Turner in a rushed descriptive manuscript written within two weeks of obtaining them.
  March 24
  Cope presented his findings regarding Elasmosaurus to a meeting of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
  1868
  Cope described the new species Elasmosaurus platyurus.
  Cope's description of Elasmosaurus was formally published.
  September
  William E. Webb and others collected and shipped a plesiosaur specimen to Cope.
  1869
  Seeley described the species now known as Liopleurodon pachydeirus and Peloneustes philarchus.
  Cope named the plesiosaur specimen collected by Webb Polycotylus latipinnis.
  August
  Cope prepared a preprint for the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society of his Elasmosaurus description, including reconstruction of the animal with a short neck and very long tail. The manuscript was then distributed to other scholars.
caption: Skeleton of Rhomaleosaurus cramptoni. R. cramptoni was described by Carte and Baily in 1863.
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