Hawkins' Plesiosaur

3D Model

Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

A cast of a young but almost complete plesiosaur, seen from the underside. It shows well how the skeleton of a plesiosaur is made up, the long neck, the four outstretched paddles which it used to ‘fly’ underwater and the strong barrel-shaped body.

This plesiosaur shows why Rev. William Conybeare, the Bristol man who invented the name ‘Plesiosaurus’, described these animals as ‘like a snake threaded through the body of a turtle’.

The original specimen, now in the Natural History Museum, London, came from the lower Lias rocks of Street, Somerset in the early part of the C19th. It was found by Thomas Hawkins (1810-1889) of nearby Glastonbury, the great collector who introduced the name ‘the Great Sea Dragons’ in 1840.

The cast was made in the Geology Laboratory of the City Museum & Art Gallery. A previous cast was destroyed by bombing in 1940.

Captured 10-02-2016 1pm