It has now been demonstrated that 242 million years ago, there was a class of animals that could be called giraffes in the water, with a neck that was three times the length of the total body, thanks to a 3D skull and bone analysis and reconstruction technique by paleontologists that allowed us to see the true appearance of such animals.
Its bizarrely long neck is the most absurd structure in the history of paleontology. The creature belongs to the genus Diplodocus, but its skeleton fossils were found as early as the 1850s, but because of its surprising appearance, paleontologists don't even know whether it lives on land or in the ocean.
If this long-necked dragon lived on land in the middle and late Triassic, it is difficult to even imagine how it could have lifted its long neck, so recent research by Swiss paleontologists has shown that this kind of long-necked dragon with a length of nearly six meters lived in the ocean, and its adaptability is very shocking.
The long-necked dragon has a nose vestibule at the top of the maxilla and has curved fangs, making it ideal for catching mucus-covered prey, such as octopus and fish. And through research, studies have shown that this kind of long-necked dragon has evolved into two different suborders in the future, and its body size is very large.
Named Tanystropheus by paleontologists, the long-necked dragon had a head very similar to that of the giant bay crocodile, but with a very long neck that appeared to be very exaggerated in proportion.
242 million years ago, when ancient creatures first existed on the ground, it is speculated that the total length of the relatively large brown-backed dragon has exceeded 5 meters, but the neck has reached about 3 meters, the total length of the trunk is about 0.67 meters, and the tail length is about 2 meters.
At first, paleontologists always thought that Tanistrops was a kind of flying pterosaur, it was like a pterodactyl, it had slender and long hollow bones, thinking that these bones were pterodactyl finger bones, used to carry wings to fly, but in the end it was found that this type of bone was its neck bone.
In Switzerland, in other areas where Tanistrops animal fossils have been found, there are also many similar animal fossils, some of which are only about a meter long, and experts do not know whether the owners of such fossils are land-dwelling animals or marine organisms, nor do they know whether such smaller samples are juvenile fossils or a separate population, which has become an unsolved mystery in the paleontological world.
Inexplicably, Tanistrops' long neck consisted of only 13 thin, long cervical vertebrae. And its neck bone is very strong, with an additional bone called a neck rib to lift the load and maintain stability.
The skull of Tanistrops's fossil has long been squashed by the rock formation, and for a long time researchers did not know its true face, until experts achieved computer tomography of the fossil and transformed the bone fragments into 3D images.
Using synchrotron radiation microcomputer tomography, the skull was reconstructed at an unprecedented key point. From a severely squashed skull, one can recreate a 3D skull that is essentially intact.
By digitizing and intelligently reorganizing the scan results, researchers have found direct evidence that such creatures are actually aquatic organisms. These skulls have certain important features, including crocodile-like nasal passages at the tip of the nose, suggesting that the genus Long-necked Dragon lived in the water.
It is very likely that such slender and long beasts will lurk and wait for the creatures of the chapter fish to swim by, and then exert the superiority of the long neck, and the bent teeth will bite the prey in one mouth.
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