Posted on 12/06/2006 10:27:08 AM PST by presidio9
It has been described as a snake threaded through the body of a turtle, and some imaginative people think there's one living in Loch Ness.
The plesiosaur, a marine reptile that lived 160 million years ago, looked like nothing alive today, with a neck that was some 2 metres long, the length of the body and tail combined. Why it needed such a long neck has been a mystery, but now Leslie Noè of the Sedgwick Museum in Cambridge, UK, has an answer.
Plesiosaurs used their long necks to reach down and feed on soft-bodied animals living on the sea floor, Noè told the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting in Ottawa, Canada, last month. He examined fossils of a plesiosaur called Muraenosaurus, and by calculating the articulation of the neck bones he concluded the neck was flexible and could move most easily when pointing down. "The neck was a feeding tube, collecting soft-bodied prey," he says. The small skulls of plesiosaurs couldn't cope with hard-shelled prey.
He also has some disappointing news. "The osteology of the neck makes it absolutely certain that the plesiosaur could not lift its head up swan-like out of the water," Noè says, ruling the reptile out as a candidate for the Loch Ness
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
ping
I don't know about that but my 6 year old loves that truck ad.
It's a Pelosi-saur
The important thing here is that we have a legitimate scientific journal discussing Nessie as if she may actually exist.
Did they have gills, or breathing holes on top of their heads? Otherwise, how would they breathe?
Legitimate? Not after posting that story.
Which grocery store gossip rag are they trying to compete with?
you are joking - I hope
No referrences to Batboy without a picture.
Are you saying that literally dozens of crackpots over the years are ALL lying?
A Coulterism?
They were reptiles which have lungs.
Thank you. A voice of sane intelligence in a world of mocking disbelievers, most of whom have probably spent little time in the real outdoors and don't understand the mysteries of the animal kingdom.
Well said!
a couple of college students actually found a very large tooth in the carcass of a deer on the bank of the Lockness a few years ago. It was found to be from the eel family and given the size of the tooth it had to come from one about 50 feet long and with a very big head!
This is for real...coasttocoast did a show on it and photos of the tooth were shown. They sold it for a pretty large sum of money.
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