Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Plesiosaur
/ˈpliːsiəsɔːr/noun
An extinct long-necked marine reptile with four paddle-shaped limbs.
The Greek roots
πλησίος
plēsíos
near, close to
σαῦρος
saûros
lizard
Literally: “near lizard”
The story of the word
Conybeare named Plesiosaurus in 1821 as the near lizard, meaning nearer to ordinary lizards than the Ichthyosaurus already described. Mary Anning's complete skeleton from Lyme Regis two years later had a neck so long that Cuvier at first suspected a fake, then wrote to withdraw the charge. They were marine reptiles rather than dinosaurs, and fossils with embryos inside show they gave birth to live young at sea.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
ichthyosaurdinosaurpterosaur
In a sentence
The plesiosaur in the hall was collected from the Dorset cliffs in the 1820s.