In a recent discovery about the Jurassic period, paleontologists find evidence that the giant reptile Pliosaurs could have reached up to the length of 14.4 meters, which was previously overestimated. It’s double the size of a killer whale. They have published their findings in the paper “The Proceedings of the Geologists Association”.
The pliosaurs a giant sea monsters that lived during the Jurassic and early Cretaceous periods. Paleontologists have discovered that Liopleurodon size is not what they found earlier.
Know About Liopleurodon a type of Pliosaur
Liopleurodon one of the Pliosaur
Liopleurodon is part of the Jurassic era. Large sea reptiles belonging to the family of Pliosauridae. Its head is quite similar to the crocodile’s elongated shape, with four flippers, and a short tail, approximately 7.5 meter long tooth.
How Pliosaur Length Mystery Solved by Paleontologists?
Back 20 years ago in 1999 on the BBC “Walking with Dinosaurs” TV documentaries showed a 25-meter-long Liopleurodon by the paleontologist David Martill. Many other Paleontologists spark heated debate over the size of this pliosaur, they suggest that its size is overestimated and it was likely to reach an adult size of just over six meters long.
Watch the BBC “Walking With Dinosaur” 1999 documentary about Liopleurodon, where Palaeontologist David Martill claim that its height is 25 meters long.
But recently University of Portsmouth’s School of the Environment, Geography, and Geoscience Paleontologist Professor David Martill at Abingdon County Hall Museum looking through the fossils drawers and found large vertebrae and was thrilled to discover that the curator has three more of them in storage.
He found out that Vertebra is clearly related to Pilosaurus species or similar animals.
3-D scan image of Pilosaur Cervical Vertebral Centrum (Image Credit: University of Portsmouth)
Professors David Martill said “I was a consultant for the BBC’s pilot program ‘Cruel Sea’ and I hold my hands up — I got the size of Liopleurodon horrendously wrong. I based my calculations on some fragmentary material that suggested a Liopleurodon could grow to a length of 25 meters, but the evidence was scant and it caused a lot of controversy at the time.”
They conducted the topographic scans and find that the Pliosaurs have grown to 9.8 and 14.4 meters long.
These vertebrae found out that it is 152 million years old and from the late Jurassic age. It was discovered during the excavation at Warren Farm in the River Thames Valley in Oxfordshire.
David Martill said “We know these pliosaurs were very fearsome animals swimming in the seas that covered Oxfordshire 145-152 million years ago. They had massive skulls with huge protruding teeth like daggers — as big, if not bigger than a T. rex, and certainly more powerful.”
“They were at the top of the marine food chain and probably preyed on ichthyosaurs, long-necked plesiosaurs, and maybe even smaller marine crocodiles, simply by biting them in half and taking chunks off them. We know they were massacring smaller marine reptiles because you can see bite marks in ichthyosaur bones in examples on display in The Etches Collection in Dorset.”
He also said that there is a chance in future that we will find the bigger pliosaurs.