Pliosaurus

Pliosaurus in a live reconstruction

• England

Pliosaurus (Size: pleion = more sauros = lizard; to indicate that the animal was crocodile -like than plesiosaur ) is an extinct marine reptile from the group of plesiosaurs ( Plesiosauria ) from the Middle and Upper Jurassic.

Finds

The genus is known by several partially preserved skeletons in the 19th century. An almost complete skeleton of a 2.1 meter long P. brachyspondylus was not found until 1994 by the fossil hunters Simon Carpenter in the southern English county of Wiltshire. Parts of an approximately 15 m wide copy were excavated by Jørn Hurum on Spitsbergen in August 2007.

Description

Pliosaurus was a typical representative and the eponymous genus of Pliosaur ( Pliosauroidea ), which differ in the short neck and long, pointed head of the actual plesiosaurs ( Plesiosauroidea ). Pliosaurus was about 10 to 13 meters long, its head length was 1.5 to 2.5 meters. His eyes were large, the orbit reinforced with a ring of bony plates. The external nares were very small, precisely as great as in Rhomaleosaurus, which was only half as large as Pliosaurus. Maybe the animal was breathing when emerging with the mouth. The external nares were smelling underwater.

The pine salvaged a total of 30 to 38 teeth, ten or twelve of them sat on each ramus. The first five to six of these teeth were enlarged. Some authors do not distinguish Pliosaurus of Liopleurodon. The teeth of the latter were conical, round in cross -section, which had a Pliosaurus of triangular cross-section.

Currently, this genus includes the two largest known Pliosaur, P. and P. macromerus funkei, both reached the 13 m body length.

Way of life

Pliosaurus was probably an opportunistic hunter who chased a wide range of prey, fish, cephalopods and other marine reptiles and their prey tracked with the eyes and the sense of smell. Maybe he ate carrion, as the sea guessed dinosaur carcasses. In a Pliosaurus fossil was found three originally covered with a layer of horn bone scales that did not come from a Pliosaurus, but were identified as flakes of an armored dinosaur bird Beck ( Ankylosauria or Stegosauria ). They were possibly in the stomach of Pliosaurus.

Species

• Pliosaurus brachydeirus ( type species )
• Pliosaurus brachyspondylus
• Pliosaurus macromerus
• Pliosaurus funkei
• Pliosaurus rossicus