plesiosaur
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English
Etymology
Backformation of translingual Plesiosaurus, named by William Conybeare and Henry De la Beche in 1824 because plesiosaurs were more like a normal reptile than Ichthyosaurus, which had been found in the same rock strata a few years earlier. Surface derivation, plesio- + -saur.
Pronunciation
Noun
plesiosaur (plural plesiosaurs)
- Any of several extinct marine reptiles, of the order †Plesiosauria, from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
- Synonym: plesiosaurus
- 1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter IV, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, (please specify |part=I to III), New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927, →OCLC:
- "Look!" cried Olson. "Would you look at the giraffe comin' up out o' the bottom of the say?" We looked in the direction he pointed and saw a long, glossy neck surmounted by a small head rising above the surface of the river. Presently the back of the creature was exposed, brown and glossy as the water dripped from it. It turned its eyes upon us, opened its lizard-like mouth, emitted a shrill hiss and came for us. The thing must have been sixteen or eighteen feet in length and closely resembled pictures I had seen of restored plesiosaurs of the lower Jurassic.
Translations
extinct marine reptile
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