Sticking your neck out: How did plesiosaurs swim with such long necks?
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When dinosaurs ruled the land, plesiosaurs ruled the oceans. Famous for their incredibly long necks - some of which were up to 7 metres long - plesiosaurs have remained an evolutionary mystery for hundreds of years. Pernille V. Troelsen, a PhD student at Liverpool John Moores University, UK is simulating plesiosaur locomotion with a 3D model to understand how they could swim with such long necks. Plesiosaurs reconstruction [Credit: Frank DeNota, NSF] "A steady neck would be more hydrodynamic than a bent neck, and due to the pressure on a bent neck, plesiosaurs would probably only bend them when moving at slow speeds or when floating,' says Ms Troelsen. She reveals that not only increasing the bend in a plesiosaurs neck would have a big effect on the production of 'hydrodynamic drag', but the location of the bending may also play a large role. She adds that plesiosaurs would likely have had a more patient hunting style similar to today's crocodiles and snakes. "