Warm Blooded Dinos- Plesiosaurs

Plesiosaurs with prey

When I was looking up reptile facts, I noticed that I kept seeing this statement: most reptiles are warm blooded. I got to thinking, what reptiles don't apply to this statement, if only most reptiles are warm blooded. Turns out, there are no modern day reptiles that are 'warm blooded' per say. However, if you're willing to look back 65 to 250 million years ago. The time is the Mesozoic era. This was a major time in the earths existence due to the major change in vegetation. During the Triassic period (251-199.6 million years ago), the vegetation mainly consists of ferns and very unusual fauna. Moving into the Cretaceous period (145.5-65.5 million years ago), the vegetation had highly diversified. The three reptiles over this time frame that were indeed warm blooded were not land creatures, however. Their names were Ichthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs, and Mosasaurs. This blog focuses on the Plesiosaurs, though blogs based on the others have been written.

chilling on the beach

Plesiosaurs
The Plesiosaurs is truly the scariest I've ever seen sprout from hell's ocean. This thing looks like a whale, mixed with a giraffe, mixed with a crocodile/viper combo. These spawns of Satan existed 220 million to 65 million years ago and where some of the first fossils documented in science in 1821. This creature could be the source of the myth of the Loch Ness Monster. Essentially, it matches the description: a long neck, a broad body, a sharp toothed, strong jaw, and giant flippers. It is easy to imagine a person wondering around Loch Ness and stumbling upon a giant skeleton. The only logical solution would be that it came from the water due to its flippers, so it must be from the lake. The smallest Plesiosaurs adult skeleton that was found was 2 meters (6.5 feet) while the largest was 20 meters long (65.6 feet). They are the largest predators of all time and their skeletons can be found on every continent! From their fossils we can assume that they consumed belemnites (giant squid-like creatures) and ammonites (giant snail-squid-like creatures). Their sharp teeth vary in shape which means that they were well adapted to a wide range of prey which varies from soft sediment to armored fish. There is no evidence on how they breaded, but the Plesiosaurs was adapted like a dolphin -meaning they can breath above water- and smaller Plesiosaurs could have crawled on land and laid eggs like a turtle. This theory would explain the lack of evidence as sandy beaches are not ideal for fossilization. THEY DIED A LONG TIME AGO. So there is no monster of Loch Ness..... that we know of.

I'm so dead right now

"Loch Ness Monster"

Links: http://www.calacademy.org/explore-science/warm-blooded-reptiles
http://plesiosaur.com/more.php