Sometimes if you want something done, you have to do it yourself. Like learning how plesiosaurs — extinct sea reptiles with four paddle arms — swam. And the century-old mystery of how this giant creature got around may indeed have yielded to a few laps of tandem swimming by adventurous paleontologists.Plesiosaurs, some as large as whales, roamed the world's oceans between 220 million to 65 million years ago, before they were wiped out by whatever killed the dinosaurs.A Loch Ness monster look-alike, this curious creature resembled a snake with a mighty jaw and a turtle's body. It had four paddles whose exact motion — dog paddle or some other rhythm — have long aroused scholarly curiosity. How could such a creature dominate the seas during the age of the dinosaurs, scientists asked, while swimming with paddles that looked so ungainly? And did the paddles fly out sideways or under the beasts? Nobody knew.But a team led by paleontologist Kenneth Carpenter of the Denver Museum of Natural History believes it has solved the riddle. The team presented a solution and a demonstration video to the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology this month."We finally decided the best way to replicate it was to throw some people in the swimming pool," Carpenter says. The team's analysis of fossil joints showed that the plesiosaurs' limbs were limited to a vertical down stroke, swinging through a 55-degree angle in front and a 35-degree angle in back.
View: Full Article | Source: USA Today
