Plesiosaurus
Related Category: Vertebrate Zoology
(pl´´ssőr´s), genus of extinct predatory marine reptiles that arose in the Triassic period of geologic time and continued into the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
Plesiosaurs were long-necked marine reptiles, closely related to the Pliosaurs though probably slower in the water. Their swimming speed has been estimated at 8.
Plesiosaurs were not dinosaurs, but large marine reptiles that lived in the seas during the Age of the Dinosaurs.
They had four flippers and pointed tails. They paddled with all four flippers as they swam, rather like turtles do today.
Plesiosaur
Plesiosaurs were flippered marine reptiles from the Mesozoic Era - they were not dinosaurs.
Like all plesiosaurs, Styxosaurus's limbs were two pairs of flipper-like paddles, which it moved in a figure eight motion to fly through the water much as seals and sea lions do today.
One suggestion around here is that you saw a Plesiosaurus, but since they became extinct along with the other dinosaurs, this does not seem too likely. One (serious) possibility is that you saw a Barracuda (Sphyraina barracuda).
Non-archosaurian marine reptiles including mosasaurs and plesiosaurs, giant aquatic reptiles that were the top marine predators, became extinct by the end of the Cretaceous.[48][49]
[edit] Archosaurs ...
On several occasions corpses initially thought to be sea serpents or plesiosaurs, have later been identified as mostly likely to be the decomposing carcasses of basking sharks, as for example in the Stronsay beast and the Zuiyo Maru cases.
These skeletal features separated dinosaurs from other ancient reptiles, such as the plesiosaurs and pterosaurs, and certainly from the much more recent saber-tooth tigers, mastodons, mammoths and other Ice Age animals.
Isurus hastilus is nearly identical in terms of tooth structure and function. The ancient mako hastilus was probably 6 m long and nearly 2,800 kg; it was the Cretaceous grand mako that shared the seas with kronosaurs, ichthyosaurs, and plesiosaurs.
Opalised plesiosaur teeth
Opalised stegosaurid ulna
Opalised theropod dinosaur tooth
Opalised turtle leg bone
Opalised yabby buttons
Open House - Michael Stone
Ophichthid leptocephalus off Kona, Hawaii
Opportunists in Hiding ...
 See also: Reptile, Tyrannosaurus, Stegosaurus, Iguanodon, Diplodocus
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