Dinosaur Bones at MNHN Found to Belong to New Genus

Luxembourg's National Museum of Natural History (Musée national d'histoire naturelle Luxembourg - MNHN), also known as the “natur musée”, has announced that the pliosaur fossil bones and teeth permanently exhibited in the museum were found to belong to a new genus, Lorrainosaurus.

In 1983, the bones and teeth of a pliosaur were unearthed near Metz, Lorraine, in northeastern France. The animal was probably more than 6 metres long and lived during the early Middle Jurassic, around 170 million years ago. An international team of palaeontologists, including Ben Thuy from the MNHN, analysed the remains and identified them as belonging to a new genus, Lorrainosaurus.

The Lorrainosaurus fossil is the oldest large pliosaur skeleton known to date. The animal had a skull more than 1.3 metres long with massive jaws, large conical teeth, a short neck and a massive torpedo-shaped body with four fin-like limbs.

“We were able to show that Lorrainosaurus was one of the first truly large pliosaurs to develop and give rise to a dynasty of marine reptile super-predators that dominated the oceans for around 80 million years,” said Sven Sachs, a researcher at the Naturkunde-Museum in Bielefeld, who led the study.

The bones and teeth of Lorrainosaurus are permanently exhibited at the MNHN in Luxembourg.

They are nothing more than the remains of a once complete skeleton, which has decomposed and been scattered across the seafloor by currents and scavengers. “The remains of Lorrainosaurus were discovered in 1983 by palaeontology enthusiasts from the ‘Meranelogical and Paleontological Association of Hayange and surrounding areas’. They recognised the importance of their discovery and donated the fossils to the Museum of natural history of Luxembourg", explained co-author of the publication, Ben Thuy, curator at the MNHN.

The discovery suggests that the reign of giant pliosaurs must have begun earlier than previously thought and that it responded locally to major ecological changes that affected the marine environment of present-day Western Europe in the Early Jurassic age. Lorrainosaurus therefore provides important knowledge about ancient marine reptiles from a phase of the dinosaur era that has only been partly studied until now.

Lorrainosaurus reconstruction, MNHN