Liopleurodon

The pliosaur Liopleurodon ferox, which swam in European seas during the Middle and Late Jurassic.

It’s impossible to mention this animal without recalling its appearance in the 1999 documentary Walking With Dinosaurs, that portrayed it as a 25 m titan. That impressive size was based on estimates and assumptions drawn from fragmentary fossils suggesting animals up to 20 meters long, along with the idea that the largest of all plesiosaurs might never have been preserved or discovered. Today, such estimates are recognized as exaggerated, and the fragments cannot even be confidently attributed to Liopleurodon itself. As such, the species is now more accurately estimated to have had a skull of ~1.5 m and a total body length of about 6 meters, with the largest specimens possibly reaching up to 8 meters.

Cold porcelain, 1:35 scale.