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Naturalist Richard Lydekker was informed of a plesiosaur skeleton in the British Museum of Natural History by geologist George Charles Crick, who worked there. The specimen, catalogued under NHMUK R1253,[2] had been discovered in the Oxford Clay Formation in Green End, Kempston, near Bedford. While Lydekker speculated that the skeleton was once complete, it was damaged during excavation. The limb girdles had been heavily fragmented when the specimen arrived at the museum, but a worker named Lingard in the Geology Department managed to restore much of them. In addition to the limb girdles, the specimen also consists of a partial mandible, teeth, multiple vertebrae (although none from the neck), and much of the limbs. Lydekker identified this specimen as an individual of Plesiosaurus philarchus and published a description of it in 1889. After studying this and other specimens in the Leeds Collection, he concluded that plesiosaurs with shortened necks and large heads could not be classified as species of Plesiosaurus, meaning that "P." philarchus belonged to a different genus. He initially assigned it to Thaumatosaurus in 1888,[7] but later decided that it was distinct enough to warrant its own genus, which he named Peloneustes in his 1889 publication.[8] The name Peloneustes comes from the Greek words pelos, meaning "mud" or "clay", in reference to the Oxford Clay Formation, and neustes, meaning "swimmer".[4] Seeley, however, lumped Peloneustes into Pliosaurus in 1892, claiming that the two were insufficiently different to warrant separate genera.[9] Seeley and Lydekker could not agree on which genus to classify P. philarchus in, representing part of a feud between the two scientists. However, Peloneustes has since become the accepted name.[7] diagram of the front and hind paddles Fore (left) and hind (right) paddles of NHMUK R2440, a specimen from the Leeds Collection The Leeds Collection contained multiple Peloneustes specim