Traskasaura Sandrae: Canada’s “Very Strange” Sea Monster – The Perfect Hybrid of Neck and Teeth!

Paleontologists have unveiled Traskasaura sandrae—a bizarre new elasmosaurid plesiosaur from Canada whose astonishingly long neck and specialized denтιтion represent one of the strangest marine reptile combinations ever discovered.

Recovered from the Late Cretaceous Bearpaw Formation of Alberta (~75 million years ago), the near-complete skeleton includes a 7.2-meter neck on a 12-meter-long body and a skull packed with dozens of interlocking, needle-like teeth. These features suggest a unique feeding strategy: the animal could sweep its hyper-elongated neck through schools of fish or squid while its teeth acted like a precision trap, snagging prey that other plesiosaurs would miss.

Named in honor of Sandra Trask, the amateur fossil hunter who found the specimen in 2023, Traskasaura was described by a Canadian-Japanese team led by Dr. Emily Bamforth in Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (June 2026). CT scans reveal that its neck vertebrae allowed extreme lateral flexibility, while the teeth show wear patterns consistent with piercing soft-bodied prey rather than crushing shells.

“This creature is a true evolutionary oddball,” Bamforth noted. “It combined the longest neck in its family with a dental toolkit no other marine reptile possessed—proof that Late Cretaceous oceans supported highly specialized predators right up to the end.”

The discovery adds a dramatic new player to the Western Interior Seaway ecosystem and highlights how even well-studied regions like Alberta can still yield astonishing surprises. From the badlands of Canada, Traskasaura sandrae emerges as a 75-million-year-old masterpiece of “neck plus teeth” engineering—a strange and wonderful sea monster that redefines what we thought possible for plesiosaurs.