Paleontologists analyzed a 170 million-year-old set of fossils collected from a road project in France and found them to belong to a new, massive underwater predator that stands (or swims) as the oldest-known creature of its kind.
A group of local paleontology enthusiasts 40 years ago collected the fossils from a road cutting near Metz in Lorraine, France, and donated them to the Natural History Museum in Luxembourg for safe keeping. The bones remained there until recently, when an international team hailing from Germany, Poland, Luxembourg, and Sweden classified the animal as a Lorrainosaurus, the oldest massive, or "megapredatory," pliosaur.
