The Collaborative International Dictionary
Elasmosaurus \E*las`mo*sau"rus\, n. [NL., fr. Gr. ? a metal plate + ? a lizard.] (Paleon.) An extinct, long-necked, marine, cretaceous reptile from Kansas, allied to Plesiosaurus.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
giant sea reptile from the Mezozoic, 1868, from Modern Latin (coined by E.D. Cope), from comb. form of Greek elasmos "metal plate" (from elan "to strike;" see elastic) + -saurus. So called from the caudal laminae and the great plate-bones.
Wikipedia
Elasmosaurus (; from Greek ελασμος elasmos 'thin plate' (referring to thin plates in its pelvic girdle) + σαυρος sauros 'lizard') is a genus of plesiosaur with an extremely long neck that lived in the Late Cretaceous period ( Campanian stage), 80.5 million years ago.
Usage examples of "elasmosaurus".
Returning, I shall feed the elasmosaurus regularly until my friends come, and we decide what final disposition to make of it.
It would be a pleasant thing if you had the robust health of the elasmosaurus, but what a wonderful thing it would be if that mighty engine had your intelligence.
The weather is cool and even, and the wound in the head of the elasmosaurus has every chance for healing.
The animal possesses a vitality superior to any of our later day animals, and if any organism can successfully become the host of a foreign brain, nourishing and cherishing it, the elasmosaurus with its abundant vital forces can do it.
As I approached the elasmosaurus this morning, I noticed a faint disturbance in the water near its flippers.
The elasmosaurus was still motionless when I arrived at the cove this morning.
I shrieked, I screamed, and the amphitheatre of rocks echoed and re-echoed my cries, and all the time the head of the elasmosaurus raised aloft to the full height of its neck, swayed about unsteadily, and its mouth silently struggled and twisted, as if in an attempt to form words, while its eyes looked at me now with wild fear and now with piteous intreaty.
And now a hotshot young vertebrate paleontologist comes breezing through her life, bronze-skinned and windblown from a summer spent digging up Elasmosaurus skeletons, with a rusted-out old Ford Windstar crammed with fossils and a head full of sacred lore.