New Gigantic Pliosaur coloring page

 Free Coloring Page drawings are here at this site.

Today's newest drawing is of a huge Pliosaur.

I drew these drawings that you are welcome to print for kids or adults to color. 

New Gigantic Pliosaur

This drawing is based on a recent find... a skull of a huge Pliosaur.  It was found on the Jurassic Coast of Southern England.  The tip of the snout fell out of a cliff by the ocean.  Eventually, the entire skull was found up in the cliff face.  It is thought that this species of Pliosaur was the biggest of all time.  The majority of the skull was found 40 feet up the cliff face and it took a lot of creative engineering to get it out of the rock and down to the beach so it could be taken away to be cleaned up and studied.  The paleontologists only had three weeks to do it before the fall and winter storms started.

Pliosaurs were the biggest predators of the Jurassic oceans.  Pliosaurs are a short-neck Plesiosaur.  The long-neck Plesiosaurs are more well-known now.  But the short-neck Plesiosaurs or Pliosaurs were the real top predators of the Jurassic seas.  Some Pliosaurs you might have heard of are Liopleurodon and Kronosaurus.   They had an incredibly strong bite and certainly ate other marine reptiles like Ichthyosaurs and long-neck Plesiosaurus.  

This latest find of a big Pliosaur had a head that was over 6 feet long and a body length that is estimated to have been over 40 feet long. The new Pliosaur had large conical teeth up front and curved teeth towards the back of the mouth.  So the curved teeth were further towards the back of the mouth.  The conical teeth in the front were great for grasping prey, such as other big marine reptiles. There was also evidence in the jaw of this fossilized skull of Pliosaurs being able to regrow lost teeth. By the way, this is the largest and most well-preserved of any Pliosaur skull that has ever been found.

I learned about this amazing find on an episode of the PBS show called Nature: Attenborough and the Jurassic Sea Monster.  The show pointed out that this monster had pressure sensors on the tip of its snout.  Crocodilians have this as well.  So animals with these pressure sensors on their "nose" can sense their prey, even in dirty murky water or deep down in the sea where there is no sunlight. 

See if you can identify the following in the drawing:  bony fish or Class: Osteichthyes, squid and octopus or Class: Cephalopoda, sharks or cartilaginous fish or Class: Chondrithyes, three Ichthyosaurs who like the Pliosaur are put in Class: Reptilia.  Finally, see if you can see two Jellyfish from Class: Scypozoa.

Look closely right at the top of the head behind the eyes.  There is a dark spot that represents the parietal eye.  This is a third eye that we are not too sure about its uses.  Maybe this third eye was to help the Pliosaur tell where the surface was.  

NOTE:  This drawing, in printable form, is found by clicking on the button labeled "Paleontology" and scrolling to the bottom of the Mesozoic section of the list of drawings.  Have fun coloring.