Shiqiu Liu

Adam Stuart Smith, Yuting Gu, Jie tan, C Karen Liu, Greg Turk

Academic paper

PLoS Comput Biol

11

12

e1004605

Plesiosaurs are an extinct group of Mesozoic marine reptiles with a global distribution that spans 135 million years. They maintained a unique body plan with two pairs of large wing-like flippers throughout their long evolutionary history, but how plesiosaurs swam has remained a topic of debate for almost 200 years. We address the question of how plesiosaurs swam using a digital, three-dimensional, free-swimming model of a plesiosaur in a simulated fluid. We performed thousands of simulations under different parameters to investigate possible plesiosaur swimming patterns. Our simulations show that the forelimbs provide the majority of thrust, and that the thrust from the hindlimbs is weak. The plesiosaur swims primarily with its forelimbs using an underwater flight stroke, essentially the same as turtles and penguins.

English