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 ...

While the found fossilized skin piece is small - smaller than a fingernail – its structure can be thoroughly analyzed through microscopic studies. After conducting these studies, scientists have ...

This allowed them to study the microscopic structure of the fossil tissue ... The team was amazed to discover that the reptile had areas of both smooth and scaly skin. “Taken together, this plesiosaur ...

Plesiosaurs were marine reptiles that lived alongside ... This provided a microscopic glimpse into the plesiosaur’s skin and found it wasn’t entirely smooth-skinned, as previously thought.

In some samples, they could even visualize skin cell nuclei under the microscope ... difficult to analyze than other prehistoric marine reptiles. "Our findings help us create more accurate ...