![]() However, the whole idea is nonsense, not least because air-breathing reptiles couldn’t escape detection. An extremely successful group, plesiosaurs ruled the Mesozoic oceans for millions of years, exploring a wide range of habitats and niches. In the 1930s, the idea that a few plesiosaurs still lived in Loch Ness in Scotland captured the public’s imagination. They died out 66 million years ago, along with the dinosaurs. Some evolved into the short-necked, large-headed pliosaurs, such as the enormous Predator X. Plesiosaurs thrived during the Jurassic and Cretaceous. It was about 20 feet long and about 10 feet tall. Its most defining feature was its huge, bony mass, or lump, on its face. This allowed them to spread around the world, which may be why both groups survived the end-Triassic extinction, says Sander. Pachyrhinosaurus, meaning 'thick-nosed lizard', was a medium-sized centrosaurine ceratopsian that lived in the Late Cretaceous Period of North America. While most Triassic marine reptiles lived in shallow seas, plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs were strong swimmers that lived in the open seas and gave birth to live young. It retains a distinctive curvature on the humerus, a feature found in many ancestors of the plesiosauridae such as pistosaurs and nothosaurs. Compared with other genera, Plesiosaurus has a narrow and short head. He thinks they were ambush predators: their long necks and small heads may have let them sneak up to unsuspecting fish in murky waters. Plesiosaurus is a medium sized member of the plesiosauridae. ![]() “If you have a long neck and you stiffen it, what is it good for?” asks Sander. These “snake-necked” marine reptiles gave rise to plesiosaurs late in the Triassic, the new find confirms.īut contrary to many early depictions, plesiosaurs had stiff necks that could not bend much, which is puzzling. Some evolved long, flexible necks with up to 70 vertebrae – more than any other vertebrates. “But until you actually find it you can’t know what it’s going to look like.”Īt the beginning of the Triassic, a wide range of reptiles colonised the seas. So everyone was expecting to find a plesiosaur from the Triassic,” says Roger Benson of the University of Oxford. “Very early in the Jurassic there are lots and lots of plesiosaurs, as if they appeared from nowhere. But until now only a few bone fragments, tentatively identified as plesiosaur remains, have been found. The great diversity of plesiosaurs found in the early Jurassic suggests at least six lineages survived the end-Triassic extinction. 66 Likes, TikTok video from Jurassic Arena (jurassicarena): 'MEGALODON VS PLESIOSAURUS - Jurassic World Evolution 2 (mod) foryou sealife. Tanja Wintrich and Martin Sander with the fossil Rhaeticosaurus
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