![]() ![]() Plesiosaurs, known scientifically as the Plesiosauria, are separated into two morphological groups based on body form, the pliosauromorphs and the plesiosauromorphs. Their iconic nature has even netted them roles in popular media, including Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth and Cooper and Schoedsack’s King Kong. ![]() Plesiosaurs came in all shapes and sizes, ranging from as big as a whale to smaller than your average porpoise, and had equally diverse diets. They lived in a wide range of environments from near-shore estuaries to the open ocean, and some even lived in freshwater habitats. Despite this early hiccup, the animal that Cope described has remained interesting to scientists.Įlasmosaurus was a plesiosaur, part of an extraordinarily diverse and successful group of marine reptiles that ruled the Earth’s oceans for 160 million years. This obvious anatomical error was a source of great embarrassment for Cope, and he was quick to react by recalling as many copies of the article as he could, a mistake that Marsh never let him forget. This is because Cope’s original reconstruction of Elasmosaurus was restored backward, with the head on the end of what was actually its tail. Cope went on to contact Turner and request his help in order to obtain the rest of the specimen, and in March 1868 Cope gave the creature its name: Elasmosaurus platyurus.Ĭope’s publishing of Elasmosaurus is infamous among those familiar with his participation in the Bone Wars, a time of prolific species naming in paleontology between Cope and his rival Othniel Charles Marsh. While he was only able to recover a few vertebrae, he recognized that they must come from some kind of extinct animal, and it was not long before the fossils found themselves in the possession of up-and-coming American Paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope. Inland lived the pterosaur Dimorphodon and the primitive thyreophoran Scelidosaurus.It was the Spring of 1867, 23 kilometers northeast of Fort Wallace, Kansas, where American army surgeon Theophilus Turner made one of the most important fossil discoveries of the decade. Other marine animals found here include Attenborosaurus, Ichthyosaurus, Archaeonectrus and various ammonites and fish. This is a part of the Lias lithostratigraphic unit found across a large area of northern Europe including the British Isles and Germany and spans from the latest Permian to the Early Jurassic. Plesiosaurus remains have been found in the Charmouth Mudstone Formation. These were later moved to their own separate genera, including Attenborosaurus. Like many Mesozoica genera named in Victorian times, Plesiosaurus became a wastebasket genus, with many plesiosauridae genera being assigned to it with little study. Its name means 'near lizard' due to it looking more like modern reptiles than Ichthyosaurus. Plesiosaurus was an early discovery, with its remains being found along the Jurassic Coast in southern England by collector Mary Anning in 1823. With its sleek body and powerful fins, Plesiosaurus was an ocean going hunter, feeding on fish and ancient cephalopods which were abundant in the Jurassic waters. Due to the structure of their skeletons, they could not survive on land and instead they were purely aquatic animals which gave birth to live young. Also recently disproved was the theory that these creatures would haul themselves onto land, similar to modern seals. However given the rigid structure of their necks, this seems very unlikely. Many old reconstructions show plesiosaurs with long, flexible necks arching out of the water and held in poses similar to some sauropods. This indicates that Plesiosaurus was a primitive member of its family. 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. ![]() Plesiosaurus is a medium sized member of the plesiosauridae. File:Plesiosaurus Rana pattern from Evolution 2.png ![]()
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