Interesting! Pregnant Plesiosaur Fossil May Shed Light on Ancient Animal's Behavior

[Flaxbee]

This is just fascinating, and totally cool. It had never occurred to me before that most (if not all?) of the fossils we've found were of individual dinosaurs, not gestating females - and finding this is just fascinating:


From PBS.org:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/08/pregnant-plesiosaur-fossil-may-shed-light-on-ancient-animals-behavior.html

Scientists have pieced together the first-ever fossil of a pregnant plesiosaur, a giant Mesozoic sea reptile from the Cretaceous Era, with an embryo still inside.

The animal, which roamed the seas 78-million years ago, is about 15-feet long -- the length of a minibus -- and bones indicate that the baby plesiosaur would have been as long as six feet when born.

The finding, published in the online edition of the journal Science on Thursday, is definitive evidence that the giant sea creature gave birth to single, live offspring, rather than laying eggs, like most reptiles, says paleontologist and lead author F. Robin O'Keefe. This reproductive behavior also indicates that the animals were gregarious social creatures that cared for their young, similar to toothed whales or dolphins, according to the paper.

"What is earth-shattering is that plesiosaurs are doing it differently than other reptiles," O'Keefe said. "Instead of having lots of little babies, they're having one big baby -- a single, very large fetus."

[Arugula Latte]

1. Whoa, so cool.

I love hearing about stuff like this. It boggles the mind.

Thanks for posting. :hi:

[Flaxbee]

2. I know. For some reason, thinking about a pregnant

dinosaur, dying so very long ago and we can actually see the embryo, that there this dinosaur had live births, not eggs, etc. -- as you said, boggles the mind. Wondering what killed the mother.