Dinosaur fossils & 3D skeletons › Elasmosaurus
Elasmosaurus Fossil & 3D Skeleton
Elasmosaurus platyurus
- Age
- Cretaceous, about 83.6–72.2 million years ago
- Found in
- USA
- Length
- 10.2 m
- Height
- 1.4 m
- Group
- Plesiosaurs (elasmosaurids, not dinosaurs)
How this 3D skeleton was made
This 3D model is a reconstruction. Most bone shapes (479 of 567) are estimated from close relatives and published reconstructions. The bone shapes are not the actual shapes of this species' fossils. 11 bones were shaped from photos or figures of this species' own fossils. 77 are borrowed from close relatives.
From this species 11Borrowed from relatives 77Estimated 479
Bones known from fossils
13 of 567 bones are known from fossils. 198 are missing and filled in. 356 have no record.
Known 13Filled in 198No record 356
Tap a bone on the 3D page to see where each bone shape came from.
Sources
- 3D skeleton: A reconstruction created on this site using freely usable resources (scientific papers, public domain books, and Wikimedia photos) (2026-10-05). Of the 567 bones (excluding teeth), 11 were modeled directly from photos, drawings, and dimensions of actual fossils of this species; 77 were borrowed from closely related species and scaled; and 479 were estimated. Sources used: Cope 1870 Transactions of the American Philosophical Society n.s. 14: 1-252 (Elasmosaurus on pp. 47-54) (archive.org/details/synopsisofextin00cope) (Public domain (published 1870, author died 1897)) / Williston 1906 American Journal of Science 4th ser. 21(123): 221-236, pls I-IV (archive.org/details/sim_american-journal-of-science_1906-03_21_123) (Public domain (published 1906, author died 1918)) / Williston 1914 Water reptiles of the past and present, University of Chicago Press, pp. 78, 84-87 (archive.org/details/waterreptilesofp00will) (Public domain (published 1914, author died 1918)) / Sachs, Kear, Everhart 2013 PLoS ONE doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0070877 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) / Otero 2016 PeerJ doi:10.7717/peerj.1777 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) / Wikimedia Commons (authors listed in figures.json) (CC BY 2.0 / CC BY 4.0 / CC BY-SA 2.0 / CC BY-SA 3.0 / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Public domain). For papers that are not freely usable, only factual data such as reported dimensions were referenced.
- Known bones: 13 bones are documented as fossil finds or visible in photos in the literature (the rest have not been found or cannot be confirmed from the literature).
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