The Plesiosaur’s Neck is here! Today is the official release date for my new children’s book about Poppy Plesiosaur’s unusually long neck. My advance author copies have arrived and it looks absolutely stunning, co-author Jonathan Emmett and I are both delighted with it.
Category «Anatomy»
The Plesiosaur’s Neck book – coming soon!
Did plesiosaurs have the hump?
Pick a random piece of plesiosaur paleoart and chances are the animal will be depicted with an arched back. A hump, almost. But did plesiosaurs really have the hump?
This arched posture can be traced back in the scientific literature to Andrews’ 1910-13 seminal works on the marine reptiles from the Oxford Clay.
Anatomy
All plesiosaurs have four flippers, a short body and a short tail. The skeleton below belongs to Meyerasaurus victor, one of the most complete plesiosaur specimens ever found. It shows the ventral surface (underside) of the animal (redrawn from Fraas 1910).
Investigating plesiosaur swimming using computer simulations
Monograph on Rhomaleosaurus thorntoni
Many readers will be familiar with the giant plesiosaur on display in the marine reptiles gallery of the Natural History Museum, London. This is a cast of the 7 metre long holotype of Rhomaleosaurus cramptoni, the original of which is housed in the National Museum of Ireland (Natural History) and formed the basis for my PhD thesis back in (time flies!) 2007.
Why did elasmosaurids have such a long neck?
The Planet Dinosaur plesiosaurs (part 2)
So, time for more Planet Dinosaur plesiosaurs… In part 1 of we familiarised ourselves with the taxonomy and appearance of the plesiosaurian stars of the fourth episode of the BBC’s Planet Dinosaur, ‘Fight for Life’. Now we’re all set up to pick apart, with ruthless abandon, the animators’ painstaking efforts to bring these animals to life.