Treasure of the month: A marine dinosaur from northern Germany

2 May 2019

Photo: UHH/CeNak

Three of the many marine dinosaur neck vertebrae from the CeNak collections.

A marine dinosaur over ten meters long in the port of Hamburg? In fact, around 74 million years ago, the largest known native marine dinosaur swam around in a precursor of the North Sea - this "Ur-Nordsee" also covered the area of Hamburg today. Parts of the elasmosaur, which was recovered from the Saturn Pit near Lägerdorf in 1996/97, are part of the collections of the Geological-Paleontological Museum at CeNak. For the Summer of Knowledge (June 20-23, 2019), these parts will be reunited with other finds of the elasmosaur and presented to the public. The elasmosaur is our Treasure of the Month for May.

Experienced amateur collectors, among others Joachim Ladwig, recovered the marine dinosaur from Cretaceous deposits north of Hamburg. It was described by Maisch and Späth in the Geological Yearbook 2004.

The dinosaur is of the genus Elasmosaurus or a very closely related elasmosaur. While half of the finds, mainly thoracic and cervical vertebrae and one tooth, are preserved at CeNak, the other half was privately owned for a long time, but is now archived at the Naturkunde-Museum Bielefeld. The individual vertebrae have hardly ever been prepared free, as this would require a lot of effort due to the sensitivity of the fossil bones.

Elasmosaurs are among the longest Cretaceous marine dinosaurs and had the most cervical vertebrae of any known vertebrate, numbering over 70. They were highly adapted fish hunters and represent the culmination of millions of years of evolution of long-necked marine dinosaurs. They lived at a time when, thanks in part to higher global temperatures, sea levels were about 150 meters higher than today.

Further information

Museum of Nature - Geology

Dr. Ulrich Kotthoff
Leibniz Institute for Biodiversity Change
Bundesstraße 55, Raum R. 1112
20146 Hamburg
Tel. +49 40 42838-5009
E-Mail: Ulrich.Kotthoff(ulrich.kotthoff"AT"uni-hamburg.de)@uni-hamburg.de