- WHY IT MATTERS: Excavation team member Patrick Druckenmiller, of the University of Alaska Museum, says the discovery is significant because pliosaur fossils are rarely found.
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A fossil skeleton of a "sea monster" measuring some 50 feet in length was recently discovered on an Arctic island.
Illustrations by Tor Sponga/BT/Natural History Museum/University of Oslo/Norway The "sea monster" leaps after a pterosaur, but the creature's main prey was likely other large sea reptiles
The predator represents one of the biggest species of pliosaur known to science, researchers say. Pliosaurs were the top marine predators during the dinosaur era.
