Can plesiosaurs survive today?
Can plesiosaurs survive today?
There has been no evidence to prove the existence of surviving plesiosaurs has ever been found or provided. Adam S. Smith, a plesiosaur palaeontologist and curator of Natural Sciences at Nottingham Natural History Museum, concluded that “Unfortunately, living- plesiosaurs almost certainly do not exist today”.
Did plesiosaurs ever go on land?
“Scientists have long known that the bodies of plesiosaurs were not well suited to climbing onto land and laying eggs in a nest [like dinosaurs]. So the lack of evidence of live birth in plesiosaurs has been puzzling,” O’Keefe, a plesiosaur expert at West Virginia’s Marshall University, said in a statement.
When did the plesiosaurs go extinct?
65 million years ago
Unlike the ichthyosaurs which went extinct prior to the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction, the plesiosaurs met their downfall along with the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Did plesiosaurs breathe air?
Plesiosaurs are found in shallow seas and even freshwater lakes. They were able to dive down, but they fed near the surface and had no need to go deep. Being reptiles, they had to breathe air, so there would have to be a good reason for them to leave the surface for a long time.
Is Elasmosaurus still alive?
Elasmosaurus (/ɪˌlæzməˈsɔːrəs, -moʊ-/;) is a genus of plesiosaur that lived in North America during the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous period, about 80.5 million years ago.
When did mosasaurs go extinct?
65.5 million years ago
They were not sea dinosaurs, but a separate group of reptiles, more closely related to modern snakes and lizards, according to the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum. Mosasaurs went extinct 65.5 million years ago in the same mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs, Live Science previously reported.
Why is a plesiosaur not a dinosaur?
When dinosaurs ruled on land, these reptiles prowled the seas. Plesiosaurs inhabited the seas from around 200 million to 65 million years ago. They were not dinosaurs, despite living at the same time as dinos. It is thought that plesiosaurs fed mainly on fish, breathed air and laid their eggs on beaches.
Why are plesiosaurs technically not dinosaurs?
Marine reptiles, such as ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and mosasaurs are not dinosaurs. Nor is Dimetrodon or other reptiles in the same group (previously called ‘mammal-like reptiles’ and now called synapsids). None of these other extinct groups shared the characteristic upright stance of dinosaurs.
