A fossil shelved for 47 years has turned out to be a new species of Jurassic sea creature, revealing just how much prehistoric mystery still lurks in museum collections.

Writing in Science, they say this also suggests a degree of parental care. The fossil, the first of a pregnant plesiosaur found, is at the US Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

The Traskasaura combined several "primitive and derived traits" that differ from the elasmosaurs that existed some 85 million years ago. Both are types of plesiosaurs, which were marine reptiles that ...

Learn more about Plesionectes longicollum, a well-preserved plesiosaurioid that's the oldest known from the Posidonia Shale fossil beds in Holzmaden, Germany.