Tristan Allen, a 6th grade student at Savoy Elementary, made a great find. While riding an ATV, Tristan noticed an unusual shape in the bank of Mill Creek in Bells. He dug out the strange rock and discovered that it was a fossil bone.

Ultimately, the fossil found its way to Dr. Michael Keck of Grayson County College. Dr. Keck recognized it as a large reptile vertebra and he consulted with Dr. Dale Winkler , a paleontologist at SMU’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology.  Dr.Winkler identified the fossil vertebrae as that of a plesiosaur.

“I never thought it would be from an animal so big!” Tristan said. “This is the neatest thing I’ve ever found.”

Plesiosaurs were large reptiles that swam in the ocean and ate other animals, probably fish and cephalopods such as squid and ammonites. 

This drawing of a plesiosaur is by artist, Arthur Weasley.

Most of them had a very long neck and a fairly small head.  They had four paddle-shaped limbs.  Plesiosaurs are not dinosaurs – they are in another group of extinct reptiles.  But like the dinosaurs, plesiosaurs went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous Period, 65 million years ago.

Tristan’s fossil is on display in the Savoy Elementary trophy case for all to see.  

This is a photo by Adrian Pingstone of a full plesiosaur body.

Tristan holds the fossil he found protruding from a bank on Mill Creek. photo by Trish Keck

This close-up photo of the of the plesiosaur vertebra shows the actual fossil found by Tristan. photo by Michael Keck