For one of the most impressive oceanic predators of all time, Kronosaurus queenslandicus did not receive an auspicious introduction in the scientific literature. Today the creature’s name immediately conjures up the image of a massive marine reptile with terrifying jaws arrayed with big, conical teeth, but in 1924, when Kronosaurus received its formal name, the nature of this beast was only briefly outlined by Queensland Museum director Heber Longman in a note given the thrilling title “Some Queensland Fossil Vertebrates.”

Though Longman lamented that the fossil fragment used to name Kronosaurus offered only a “tantalizingly incomplete” look at the marine reptile, he was sure that it was “[a] fragment of a very massive sauropterygian mandible” which “demonstrate[d] the existence in Australia