FAIRBANKS — The University of Alaska Museum of the North received a big gift just in time for Christmas.

Four crates containing about a thousand pounds of rocks and bones arrived at the museum on Dec. 23. The rocks and bones were just what Pat Druckenmiller was wishing for — the remains of a plesiosaur.

Plesiosaurs were carnivorous marine reptiles. Druckenmiller, the museum’s earth science curator, said they were one of the main groups of big reptiles ruling the sea. They had long necks, about half the length of their bodies, and paddles as limbs. Their fossils are found throughout the central U.S., where there used to be a shallow sea about 74 million years ago.

This plesiosaur came from a site in Montana, via Lynden Transport and UPS.

“It’s a little bit surprising to go to the middle of the continent to search for marine animals,” Druckenmiller said, but that is exactly what some scientists do.

The Western Interior Seaway split North America in half, north to south. Dinosaurs roamed the shores, and marine reptiles inhabited the sea.

In fall 2010, an elk hunter found a plesiosaur’s remains inside the Charles Russell National Wildlife Refuge in Montana.

The Museum of the

Rockies, where Druckenmiller used to work, offered him the chance to excavate the fossil. He jumped at the opportunity and headed down with his family in July 2011.

A team, including U.S. Fish and Wildlife excavators and the hunter who discovered the specimen, unearthed what Druckenmiller called it a “fantastic skeleton,” complete with a full skull and teeth, a good chunk of the neck and most of the torso and limbs.

“This (skeleton) is one of the more complete ones that we’ve ever found in North America,” he said.

Since the fossil was smaller than a typical elasmosaur, which is a type of plesiosaur, Druckenmiller thinks he could have a new species on his hands.

The Museum of the Rockies assisted in the fossil’s shipping. UPS carried the four crates from Montana to Anchorage, and Lynden Transport donated the shipping costs to carry the crates the rest of the way to Fairbanks.

Druckenmiller, known as an expert on ancient marine reptiles, will clean and study the fossil at the Museum of the North.

The fossil is owned by the Fish and Wildlife Service and will either be made available for public display or used for educational purposes in the future.