Michael Alan Taylor

Academic paper

Nature

290

Although plesiosaurs were among the dominant marine reptiles of the Mesozoic era, it was difficult to see how they hunted their prey for they had large air-filled lungs and would have been too buoyant to dive underwater easily. In a recent paper D.Q. Darby and R.W. Ojakangas (J. Paleont. 54, 548; 1980) suggest that plesiosaurs neutralised their upward buoyancy by swallowing masses of pebbles and retaining them in their stomachs in much the same way as modern crocodiles do.

Reptilia; Plesiosauria; Cretaceous; Sauropterygia; Euryapsida; locomotion; Liopleurodon; Muraenosaurus

English