Paleontologists discovered the first specimen more than two centuries ago, and the mouth full of meandering necks, flippers and sharp teeth captured the imagination. The anatomy of their skeletal structure is well documented, but their appearance remains primarily a mystery.
Currently, researchers are conducting the first detailed analysis of the soft tissues of Pleciosaurus, which may look like when these real ocean monsters lived between 215 and 66 million years ago. I look at things that aren't.
Findings published Thursday in Current Biology show that some plesiosauce have human-like skin in the tail area, and as well as the characteristics of some live sea turtle species, it is fish-like in flippers It suggests that it has a scaly scale. This study highlights evolutionary detours that contradict skin and other ancient marine reptiles, such as mosasaurus.
“These are iconic animals and the way we rebuild them hasn't changed for nearly 200 years, so this is a big update,” says Miguel Marx, a doctoral student at Lund University in Sweden. I mentioned it. “It changes our perspective on their evolutionary history and how they adapted to life at sea.”
Marx and colleagues analyzed three soft tissue skin samples, each from the nail size, flippers and tails of long-necked Prisiosaurus specimens, 183 million years ago. This species will be named in future peer-reviewed papers. However, the samples came from the Posidonia shale, Germany. There, marine chemistry preserved soft tissue. It freezes it in time. Some of the tissue ruins were so perfectly fossilized that researchers were able to see the skin cell nuclei under a microscope.
It is difficult to know for sure how extinct animals piloted the environment, but Marx said the scale observed in Pleciosaurus probably stiffens the trailing edge of the flipper, increasing the propulsion underwater. I said I could do it. Today's sea turtle.
Plesioasaurs may be using scales on flippers for towing and protection as they sifted seabed sand and vegetation for food. Previous studies suggest that a conserved marine trackway discovered near Ancona, Italy, came from a plesiosaur, another sign that it may have spent time feeding at the bottom of the ocean .
F. Robin O'Keefe, a vertebrate paleontology at Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va., said he was not involved in the study, and the findings stated that the techniques for analyzing soft tissues of Plesiosaur. It was described as “notable” in its use. Human skin resembles the skin of a plesiosaurus.
However, Dr. O'Keefe is skeptical that scale provides sufficient evidence to indicate that the Prisiosaurus walked the seabed, as it is difficult to infer such behavior from the fossils. “I haven't seen this animal spending a lot of time on the bottom,” Dr. O'Keefe said.
However, he agreed to Marx that Scale provided extra driving force for the plesiosauce. He said instead of bottom food, the animals were quick hunters with high metabolic rates.
“If you're always sitting at the bottom, you don't have to go all the trouble of having hyper-efficient wings,” said Dr. O'Keefe. “This was an active predator who was actually cruised.”
