While experts know details about its diet, size, and general habitat, the aquatic reptile’s skin characteristics have remained a mystery. But for the first time ever, researchers at Sweden’s Lund ...

The new research team confirmed it was a plesiosaur from approximately 183 million years ago, a marine reptile that ... could make out skin nuclei under a microscope. As with other plesiosaurs ...

After processing the samples to strip away any minerals, they looked at them under a microscope—which ... the plesiosaur’s scaly skin would have helped the reptile propel itself through ...