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A long-necked plesiosaur hunts a shark in shallow waters

Plesiosaurs

Plesiosaurs were long-necked marine reptiles, closely related to the Pliosaurs though probably slower in the water. Their swimming speed has been estimated at 8.2km/h, which is faster than an Olympic champion, but too slow to catch a mackerel, salmon or seal. Plesiosaurs are often depicted with their neck bent into sinuous folds. In truth it was not that flexible, and no Plesiosaur ever bent its neck into the tight curve today's swans can manage. Plesiosaurs became extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs.

Scientific name: Plesiosauroidea

Rank: Suborder

Common names:

near, close to lizard

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Habitats

The following habitats are found across the Plesiosaurs distribution range. Find out more about these environments, what it takes to live there and what else inhabits them.

Shallow seas Shallow seas
Shallow seas cover the continental shelves. These sunlit, or neritic, waters are where the oceans are most productive, where biomass is highest and where all the major sea fisheries of the world take their catches.

Behaviours

Discover what these behaviours are and how different plants and animals use them.

Additional data source: Animal Diversity Web

When they lived

Discover the other animals and plants that lived during the following geological time periods.

Jurassic period
Jurassic period Cretaceous period
Cretaceous period

What killed them

Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction
The Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction - also known as the K/T extinction - is famed for the death of the dinosaurs. However, many other organisms perished at the end of the Cretaceous including the ammonites, many flowering plants and the last of the pterosaurs.

About

Plesiosauria ( /ˌpliːsi.ɵˈsɔriə/; Greek: plesios meaning 'near to' and sauros meaning 'lizard') is an order of Mesozoic marine reptiles. Plesiosaurs first appeared in the Early Jurassic (and possibly Rhaetian, latest Triassic) Period and became especially common during the Jurassic Period, thriving until the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period.

The name "plesiosaur" is used to refer to the order Plesiosauria as a whole, not only to the long-necked forms (suborder Plesiosauroidea). These latter constitute the plesiosaurs in the popular imagination ("Nessie", "Nahuelito").

Read more at Wikipedia

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Classification

  1. Life
  2. Animals
  3. Vertebrates
  4. Reptiles
  5. Sauropterygia
  6. Plesiosauria
  7. Plesiosaurs

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