Elasmosaurus
Elasmosaurus is a genus of plesiosaur that lived in North America during the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous period. Measuring 10. 3 meters long, Elasmosaurus would have had a streamlined body with paddle-like limbs, a short tail, a small head, and an extremely long neck. Along with its relative Albertonectes, it was one of the longest-necked animals to have lived, with the largest number of neck vertebrae known.
About Elasmosaurus in brief
Elasmosaurus is a genus of plesiosaur that lived in North America during the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous period. The first specimen was discovered in 1867 near Fort Wallace, Kansas, US, and was sent to the American paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope, who named it E. platyurus in 1868. Measuring 10. 3 meters long, Elasmosaurus would have had a streamlined body with paddle-like limbs, a short tail, a small head, and an extremely long neck. Along with its relative Albertonectes, it was one of the longest-necked animals to have lived, with the largest number of neck vertebrae known, 72. Elasmosaurids probably ate small fish and marine invertebrates, seizing them with their long teeth, and may have used gastroliths to help digest their food. Contrary to earlier depictions, their necks were not very flexible, and could not be held high above the water surface. It is unknown what their long necks were used for, but they may have had an function in feeding. The generic name means ‘thin-plate reptile’ in reference to the compressed laminae of the sternal and pelvic regions, and’platyurus’ means ‘flat-tailed’ in the specific name. Only one incomplete Elasmaurus skeleton is definitely known, consisting of a fragmentary skull, the spine, and the pectoral and pelvic girdles, and a single species is recognized today; other species are now considered invalid or have been moved to other genera.
The neck alone was around 7. 1 meters long. The skull would have been slender and triangular, with large, fang-like teeth at the front, and smaller teeth towards the back. It had six teeth in each premaxilla of the upper jaw, and might have had 14 teeth in the maxilla and 19 in the dentary of the lower jaw. Most of the neck vertebras were compressed sideways, and bore a longitudinal crest or keel along the sides. It was well adapted for aquatic life, and used their flippers for swimming, but could not hold its head above water for more than a few seconds at a time. The fossil was found in the Pierre Shale formation, which represents marine deposits from the Western Interior Seaway. In December 1867 Turner and others from Fort Wallace returned to the site and recovered much of the vertebral column, as well as concretions that contained other bones; the material had a combined weight of 360 kilograms. The fossils were dug or pried out of the relatively soft shale with picks and shovels, loaded on a horse-drawn wagon, and transported back to Fort Wallace. Cope wrote to Turner asking him to deliver the rest of the specimen, at the ANSP’s expense. In March 1868, after Cope examined it, he reported it at a meeting in Philadelphia.
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This page is based on the article Elasmosaurus published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
