FINALLY IT'S OUT! Please welcome Lorrainosaurus keileni, a new pliosaur from France and a replacement for Simolestes keileni.
Besides the press release artwork I also did the skeletal drawing for this one. Based on the phylogeny I mixed here Simolestes characters with animals like Kronosaurus, to reflect it's new position.
My personal story with this specimen starts in 2016, when me and Sven Sachs spontaneously visited the Natural History Museum in Luxembourg. The biggest preserved piece of the lower jaw was already on display back then but with the fragments in the collection we were able to piece it together to be nearly complete. What was a box of scraps turned into the 1,4 m tool of a monster. I was very happy to be able to bring this project to a close by contributing the artwork that would accompany the paper eventually.
I wanted to show the animal with open mouth, to show the impressive teeth and jaw shape, but without the animal attacking something, so a cleaning scenario came to mind.
Oh, btw. here the paper, it's open access
The emergence of gigantic pliosaurid plesiosaurs reshaped the trophic structure of Mesozoic marine ecosystems, and established an ~ 80 mill
