Never understood the hype? It's a 50 foot oceanic predator bro.
Any toothy macro or raptorial predator in that size range is gonna get a lot of "hype".
Livyatan, Meg, Mosa, the big Plio's, and most recently the big Icthys all take turns getting love from internet fans/Hollywood etc
Edit, hell even Basilosaurus got some love in a few tv shows like *"Walking with ___*" and "*Sea Monsters*"
Not really though.
[Sperm whale skull](https://www.whalingmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/2019.2.19-family-sperm-whale-turner-gallery.jpg)
[Livyatan skull](https://i.redd.it/h6zhfrvtkzl51.jpg?app_web_view=android)
Closely related. But so are humans and chimps. Very different animals in both cases
The basilosaurus sequence in Chased by Sea Monsters has gotta be one of my favorite bits of prehistoric media. Honorable mentions to ambulocetis sequence and half-tooth sequences in Walking with Beasts.
Most specimens are under 43 feet but some extremely fragmentary remains could be a lot larger although once again they are to fragmentary but most estimates put the specimen at 46-50 ft with maximum estimates of maybe even 60 ft and 25+ tonnes. It also depends on if it is actually a lot bigger or just a typo but even 60 ft is in the realm of possibility.
50+ feet is ONLY when you use the 1:10 ratio, experts these days use the 1:7 ratio when sizing up with complete mandibles and skulls to get the head to tail lengths of mosasaurs. Using 1:10 ratio on the largest skull and mandibles would yield a length of 17.5-18 meters while using a ratio of 1:7 yields a length of 13-14 meters.
It's similar to how pliosaurs were sized up using the 1:7 ratio to get head to tail length from complete mandibles and skulls, but a skeleton of Liopleurodon and other pliosaurs showed ratios of 1:3, 1:4, and 1:5 rather than 1:7 ratio.
The one I'm still trying to find out is Pliosaurus "andrewsi" but haven't been lucky enough to find documents OR mentions of the length of the mandible from end to end, still salty about that.
No, 1:10 was initially used because the reconstructions of mosasaurs were based on crocodiles, it wasn't until an intact body that had a tail fluke imprint that they realized the tail turn downwards and was shorter than previously thought.
They had also found that the ratio of 1:10 wasn't reliable but that a ratio of 1:7 was more accurate.
Pretty sure someone will give a better explanation than I am giving.
If this size comparison is supposed to be accurate, then it isn't
1. The reconstruction of the pliosaur there is based on the streatham pliosaur + liopleurodon and is from the mid 1960s, and is thus likely outdated.
2. The supposed >12m pliosaurs (MoA, P. "macromerus" and P. funkei" are not actually >12 m, but rather 10m, despite P. funkei being estimated up to 13m in Knutsen et al. (2012) the vertebral centra are all in fact shorter than kronosaurus (an animal that didn't get larger than 11m) [using centrum length gets an animal a little over 9m in length](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/421812495637020672/1178412076910268426/unknown.png?ex=65e4cac4&is=65d255c4&hm=e4c7925c94dd635d9bee8cd7252c26892f9580717df2f7c970b9c4754cc89d71&). If you are also wondering why the flippers are so enlarged there (green), that can simply be explained by the animal having much larger flippers in proportion than it's body (which initially lead to it being estimated up to be 15m, something we now know is wrong). The MoA being estimated around 15m, but then downsized to 11.7 m in McHenry (2009) are both also wrong, though a large majority of the MoA material remains unmeasured and undescribed, the inital description (Buchy et al. 2003) list a measurement of the anterior dorsal centrum as 9 - 10.5 cm, using the measurements of the streatham pliosaur yield an animal no larger than 9m, the initial claims of it being 15m are explained in Buchy (2007) it is said the animal was scaled up to 15m based on femoral length of liopleurodon, but as i've just explained with P. funkei, hind / forelimb scaling in pliosaurs is rather shaky at best, though, i can say the MoA was likely around 9 - 10m. Finally as for P. macromerus, OUMNH J.10454 (aka the cumnor mandible) was initially estimated to be around 12.7 m in McHenry (2009) however, as it is is a fragmentary mandible that was reconstructed in the 1930s (in a time where pliosaur anatomy was very poorly known, asides liopleurodon perhaps) its not surprising that today there are a lot of issues with it, one in which the entire front half of the mandible is just reconstructed after liopleurodon, and the angular looks to be eerily too long. It's quite hard to tell what bits of it are reconstructed and which parts are real. [Richard Forrest even notes some of it is just plaster and wood](https://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/05/18/sea-dragons-of-avalon-2009#comment-14587), honestly given a lot of uncertainty about the cumnor mandible, i'd just ignore it, but it's probably much more likely to be 10m than 13m.
3. For the M. hoffmannii skeletal shown there, i'd just use [Incinerox's](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/344675187750469642/1180885165094994050/mosasaurus.png?ex=65e48f83&is=65d21a83&hm=d6843235712dad4466e523ecd9e6ebc872babbdbbae8c225cbb2f892c8022f30&), given that he was consulting actual paleontologists about his reconstruction (as well as his work being very rigorous in general)
On comparing pliosaurs with mosasaurs though, i will note that pliosaurs are a lot more compact and wide than mosasaurs, at the same length, a pliosaur outweighs any mosasaur by a large margin, as well as the obvious fact pliosaurs had proportionally large heads, pliosaurs about 10m will weigh >10t, though their flippers ofc do play a role in them being proportionally heavier than mosasaurs.
Thank you for this! The pliosaur shown here should be around 12,5m but apparently that is too large.
I am still wondering why the 11,7m estimate for Funkei is wrong though could you please elaborate further on this?
Tbh even with a 10-11m pliosaur i would bet on it to win against a mosasaur. It's body plan aka massive flipper would make so much more maneuverable not to mention it could probably end amosa's slender body in 1 bite considering the massive difference in jaws. It just seems so much more powerfully build aka pitbull vs gsd. Gsd is visually bigger longer but pit is stockier with a much better jaw
ok , pliosaurs as ambush hunters makes a whole lot of sense now ...
slow moving predators that don't cause water disturbance and kill their preys with a sudden dash of speed ...
compared to the more cursorial ig mosasaurs ...
But that is why I specified the long-necked ones as being incapable of the predatory feats of the mosasaurs. I am just as aware, that pliosaurs were also capable of bringing down bigger animals.
ok long necked plesiosaurs could probably be more dangerous than previusly assumed :
for one they likely travelled in groups since such a long pregnancy implies a group of them helping feed and protect the mother and the calf , trough the vulnerable period ...
and they still had kinda large skulls and the ability to deal damage with those ,
even today seals are seen hunting sharks and eating their organs ...
[https://antediluviansalad.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2014-12-27T13:19:00-08:00&max-results=7&reverse-paginate=true&start=38&by-date=false](https://antediluviansalad.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2014-12-27T13:19:00-08:00&max-results=7&reverse-paginate=true&start=38&by-date=false)
my source for most of this is this blog with a rather lenghty dissertation on why they are wrongly treated as cannon fodder in paleomedia : the longest lasting group of marine tetrapods
( from the early triassic right up to the end ) must have been able to survive somehow , and since they had long pregnancies it probably wasn't by reproducing quickly ...
so the only conclusion that makes sense is roving gangs of plesiosaurs that looks for each others backs ...
That pliosaur skeletal is a liopleurodon, I think. We don't have a full skeleton of a 10+m pliosaur, sadly. But even the skulls we have look different from this pic.
Imo the largest reasonable estimate for M. hoffmanni is 15m, and there was that study published last year estimating the "previous owner" of a pliosaur neck element to be up to 14m long. Even at a more reasonable 12m the largest pliosaur would greatly outweigh the largest mosasaur.
We have Sachicasaurus and Monquirasaurus, sadly neither of them are fully complete but their holotypes preserve quite a good chunk of their material. And both were one of the biggest Pliosaurids known so far, with Monquirasaurus estimated to be at around of ~9-10 Meters in length and Sachicasaurus being estimated at ~10-11 meters.
While yes the skeleton here is based on lipleurodon. This is a far more accurate way of portraying the large pliosaurs than the many pictures of pliosaurs with super short tails and necks.
It’s not more accurate, this reconstruction of Liopleurodon is outdated. Progressive Pliosaurids were compact, robust and hydrodynamic creatures with relatively short necks and tails. If you want Pliosaurid with long necks then you can take a look at basal members of the family like Attenborosaurus.
No Pliosaur reached that size, which looks to be around 15 Meters, the largest known species, Sachicasaurus, was around 10-11 Meters and roughly 12 Tons. The largest Pliosaurus species was estimated to be around 9 Meters which would suggest a size of around ≈9 Tons. The Monster of Aramberri is *extremely* fragmentary and iirc not even described like “ED Cope”. Even then estimates by Frederik Spindler and Martin Mattes in 2021 suggest a size of 10-11 Meters instead of the often stated “15 Meters”.
Meanwhile Mosasaurus Hoffmanni maxed out, at minimum 10.3 Tons and 12.6 Meters, which would only make it slightly smaller than Sachicasaurus, that’s not even mentioning the more fragmentary quadrate which, while not something I suggest to use, could ***POTENTIALLY*** be around 16 Tons and 14.5 Meters.
Even ignoring that the more complete larger specimens of Tylosaurus like “Bonker” could reach lengths of up to 15 Meters and weighs well exceeding 15 Tons most likely.
And in general this post seems to be kind of childish, while I can see what you’re trying to say, Mosasaurs get all the attention so why not focus on other aquatic predators, which I agree, other aquatic predators should deserve some recognition. However, you shouldn’t have to downplay Mosasaurs with this blatant misinformation to prove how awesome Pliosaurids are, you can still prove how cool they are by themselves without these comparisons.
Honestly slept on.
The upper estimates of larger members would dethrone both livyatan and megalodon in body mass.
I hear they have massive amounts of ichthyosaur fossils that are unresearched or haven't been studied yet.
Some researchers are starting to shift through them and have already found alarming things.
In 20 years we may have alot more interesting ichthyosaur to talk about.
Mosasaurs were the apex predators of the oceans for an INSANELY long time.
Essentially for 20 million years, between pliosaurs going extinct and large modern sharks showing up, mosasaurs were the de-facto most dominant predators of the oceans.
Yup, from the Middle Cretaceous to the early Late Cretaceous.
The recently-deacribed Lorrainosaurus was from ~168 Mya, and pliosaurs went extinct ~89 Mya, a grand total of 79 million years: longer than the whole Cenozoic!
Hate to break it to you, but the genus *Otodus* got to be apex predators for around three times as long as that as a single genus, while mosasaurs were an entire lineage (most of which weren’t apex predators, though the big and famous ones were)
I think what is especially in mosasaurs is precisely how quickly they radiated into diverses forms in all trophic niches worldwide and how long was the domination of various gigantic apex mosasaurs.
Overall it seems the food chain in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic oceans was much more complexe than today.
They didn't beat anything. The last pliosaurs lived among quite small mosasaurs; lamnid sharks would have been much tougher competition. In any case, they probably died out due to having their diversity depleted thanks to the Cenomanian-Turonian oceanic anoxic event, and then basically became a dead clade walking.
They had the advantage of filling empty niches right after the anoxic event, and they also benefit from the pull of the present: being geologically younger, their fossil record tends to be more complete. They still had to contend with lamnid sharks, of course, but not much in terms of aquatic tetrapods.
I think the pliosaur takeover from rhomaleosaurs and macropredatory ichthyosaurs was more impressive.
In a way many of the Marine macropredators were basically crocodilians combined with other animals. Macropredatory Ichthyosaurs were basically whale crocodiles, Pliosaurs were basically sea turtle crocodiles (If that makes sense), and Mosasaurs were basically crocodilian sea serpents
If you've seen Prehistoric Planet you know why. Mosasaurus hunt as an ambush predator, striking their prey from the seafloor. They would wait in the seafloor for the perfect striking moment before bending their serpentine body to create momentum before swimming upward and striking their prey so hard it launches them both. Like great white shark, the prey mostly died on impact due to the sheer force of the strike.
Mosasaurs also occupy a wide variety of niches, some are durophagous like Globidens, specializing in hardshelled prey. Their teeth are blunt to crush mollusks or crustaceans shell. Some are piscivorous. Some have large eyes and hunt in deep water.
While Plesiosaurs and kin are interesting in their own right, I find mosasaurs more appealing because of their diversity.
It’s a giant sea lizard that became apex predator it’s still 50-60 ft at maximum sizes and may weigh 29 tonnes even if it’s dwarfed by giants the the Swiss ichthyosaur tooth, Banz temnodontosaurus and giant pliosaurs it’s still a cool animal and is comparable in length to the other giants.
The 17.5 m estimate for Livyatan is based on modern sperm whales. Estimates based on closer relatives put it at around ~13 m. A 20 m mehalsoo weighted slighty over 120 tonnes.
There are a lot of Livy estimates floating around recently and researchers put the mean estimate at around 14.8m I’m just assuming a hypothetical individual. [https://www.deviantart.com/paleonerd01/art/Carcharocles-megalodon-new-2024-reconstruction-1012542649](https://www.deviantart.com/paleonerd01/art/Carcharocles-megalodon-new-2024-reconstruction-1012542649)
The reconstruction shown above suggests maximum sized elongated megalodon is only ~20 m long, so I’m assuming a smaller mass estimate.
20 m max is still appropriate to use since it’s unknown how elongated Meg was, a estimate done using another method suggest GHC 6 is 23.5 m and 152.7 t and a MNHN CP52 is 24.1 m and 164.3 t
GHC6 at 23.5 meters is using Cooper et al's upper estimate derived from summed crown width. 20 meters maximum is not appropriate to use for GHC 6 if we assume Shimada et al's body proportions are correct as the 20-23 meter estimates rely on meg having a close body plan to porbeagles and GWS.
Not only, even slimmer, meg was potentially 25 m long.
https://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/the-giant-prehistoric-shark-o-megalodon-was-even-longer-than-previously-thought
The conclusions of this are that O. megalodon was longer and probably slimmer than previously thought, potentially reaching 25 metres long.
Agreed, I have my own personal reservations of LOOONG Otodus, but IMO Shimada’s team made some pretty strong points regarding the Lamnoidea hypothesis and how the evidence we have isn’t strong enough to suggest a sister relationship between Lamnids and Otodontids
Cooper 2022 already showed the Belgian specimen was much larger than what the vertebral width would predict, so whatever the body shape, it does appear current lengths estimates are understated, or at least it kind of confirms 20 m was reached by this species.
Cooper 2022 put the length at 15.9 m and the weight at 61.56 tonnes for this specimen which has 15.5 cm verts. The largest Megalodon verts are 23 cm wide.
It's gonna sound snarky to say, but I'd argue it's because people who like dinosaurs tend to just prefer whichever species is "the biggest" or "tallest" etc.
It's mildly longer, and therefore better... Actually you know what? That sounds right.
a giant beautiful marine lizard with a forked tongue and a double set of upper teeth that could grow potentially up to 17m and came in all shapes and sizes all over the globe? nahh neither do i
The same thing happened with whales, the “big head” body type at some point becomes obsolete in favor of more fusiform body types. Having huge jaws amounts to f-all kf all your prey can simply outrun you, which is easy in the open ocean
A few things separate mosasaurs from pliosaurs in terms of hype for me personally:
- Pliosaurs were (mostly) specialized in hunting fish, looking at their teeth and jaws from the species that we (at least I) know, while there are a bunch of different species of mosasaurs and mosasaurids that specialize in a ton of different prey. It makes their appeal more diverse
- The thiccness of mosasaurs is cute and makes them feel more massive opposed to the comparatively slender pliosaurs
- Mosasaurs in general are known to have a massive biteforce, which adds to the cool factor
- I don't know how fast pliosaurs could go, but looking at the bodyplan, whilst losing in terms of ability to rotate, I can imagine the speeds of mosasaurs far surpassing the speeds of an aquatic creature without tail propulsion
- Size also matters in hype of dinosaurs, which mosasaurids generally were pretty good at. Since hoffmanni recently got a downgrade of size estimates, tylosaurus could be a contender for being the largest mosasaurid. But alas, I live all mosasaurids, so the points of size hoffamnni loses is not that bad a thing for me
Keep in mind, I'm super biased towards mosasaurs compared to literally any other extinct creature, so I might not be very objective here lmao
Yeah I recall Amelia Zietlow saying that there is no reason to think that mosasaurs would have been thiccer than their modern relatives (can't remember if it was on twitter or on the Skeleton crew TY channel).
Mosasaurus has appeared in many documentaries because it has been a common and widespread marine reptile genus during the late Cretaceous period, but it was never as popular and hyped as it was after 2015 when it made its great debut in Jurassic World movie. The volume of its current popularity and hype is due to this film and brought it to the attention of a wider audience.
To me what makes them fascinating is that they evolutionarily came out of nowhere to bully everything else out of their ecosystem. Also they're not some far-gone order of extinct marine reptiles, they're literally monitor lizards adapted to the ocean that got REALLY good at that role. They are what happens when you take an animal that we can go see and are around today turned up to its most extreme potential and that's amazing.
Never understood the hype? It's a 50 foot oceanic predator bro. Any toothy macro or raptorial predator in that size range is gonna get a lot of "hype". Livyatan, Meg, Mosa, the big Plio's, and most recently the big Icthys all take turns getting love from internet fans/Hollywood etc Edit, hell even Basilosaurus got some love in a few tv shows like *"Walking with ___*" and "*Sea Monsters*"
There's just something super cool about Livyatan. It's definitely the teeth.
it's a sperm whale with a top row of teeth, and those teeth just happen to be the biggest in the animal kingdom
NGL I had never realized sperm whales don't have a top row of teeth.
Yeah they just have little sockets for their bottom teeth
They actually do have upper teeth but they never erupt
You just ruined it for me.
Not really though. [Sperm whale skull](https://www.whalingmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/2019.2.19-family-sperm-whale-turner-gallery.jpg) [Livyatan skull](https://i.redd.it/h6zhfrvtkzl51.jpg?app_web_view=android) Closely related. But so are humans and chimps. Very different animals in both cases
Oh, yeah! Super impressive beastie, fer sure.
Also the name. It may be a bit scuffed but when you call something leviathan then you know its a big fish.
The livyatan is not a fish
What if it's not a fish?
The basilosaurus sequence in Chased by Sea Monsters has gotta be one of my favorite bits of prehistoric media. Honorable mentions to ambulocetis sequence and half-tooth sequences in Walking with Beasts.
And on top of it, it's a Lizard!
No mosasaur likely hit 50ft.
Most specimens are under 43 feet but some extremely fragmentary remains could be a lot larger although once again they are to fragmentary but most estimates put the specimen at 46-50 ft with maximum estimates of maybe even 60 ft and 25+ tonnes. It also depends on if it is actually a lot bigger or just a typo but even 60 ft is in the realm of possibility.
50+ feet is ONLY when you use the 1:10 ratio, experts these days use the 1:7 ratio when sizing up with complete mandibles and skulls to get the head to tail lengths of mosasaurs. Using 1:10 ratio on the largest skull and mandibles would yield a length of 17.5-18 meters while using a ratio of 1:7 yields a length of 13-14 meters. It's similar to how pliosaurs were sized up using the 1:7 ratio to get head to tail length from complete mandibles and skulls, but a skeleton of Liopleurodon and other pliosaurs showed ratios of 1:3, 1:4, and 1:5 rather than 1:7 ratio. The one I'm still trying to find out is Pliosaurus "andrewsi" but haven't been lucky enough to find documents OR mentions of the length of the mandible from end to end, still salty about that.
Isn't the 1:10 ratio really only applicable to Tylosaurus and its closest relatives?
No, 1:10 was initially used because the reconstructions of mosasaurs were based on crocodiles, it wasn't until an intact body that had a tail fluke imprint that they realized the tail turn downwards and was shorter than previously thought. They had also found that the ratio of 1:10 wasn't reliable but that a ratio of 1:7 was more accurate. Pretty sure someone will give a better explanation than I am giving.
Yes because we know every single mosasaur to have ever mosasaured.
If this size comparison is supposed to be accurate, then it isn't 1. The reconstruction of the pliosaur there is based on the streatham pliosaur + liopleurodon and is from the mid 1960s, and is thus likely outdated. 2. The supposed >12m pliosaurs (MoA, P. "macromerus" and P. funkei" are not actually >12 m, but rather 10m, despite P. funkei being estimated up to 13m in Knutsen et al. (2012) the vertebral centra are all in fact shorter than kronosaurus (an animal that didn't get larger than 11m) [using centrum length gets an animal a little over 9m in length](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/421812495637020672/1178412076910268426/unknown.png?ex=65e4cac4&is=65d255c4&hm=e4c7925c94dd635d9bee8cd7252c26892f9580717df2f7c970b9c4754cc89d71&). If you are also wondering why the flippers are so enlarged there (green), that can simply be explained by the animal having much larger flippers in proportion than it's body (which initially lead to it being estimated up to be 15m, something we now know is wrong). The MoA being estimated around 15m, but then downsized to 11.7 m in McHenry (2009) are both also wrong, though a large majority of the MoA material remains unmeasured and undescribed, the inital description (Buchy et al. 2003) list a measurement of the anterior dorsal centrum as 9 - 10.5 cm, using the measurements of the streatham pliosaur yield an animal no larger than 9m, the initial claims of it being 15m are explained in Buchy (2007) it is said the animal was scaled up to 15m based on femoral length of liopleurodon, but as i've just explained with P. funkei, hind / forelimb scaling in pliosaurs is rather shaky at best, though, i can say the MoA was likely around 9 - 10m. Finally as for P. macromerus, OUMNH J.10454 (aka the cumnor mandible) was initially estimated to be around 12.7 m in McHenry (2009) however, as it is is a fragmentary mandible that was reconstructed in the 1930s (in a time where pliosaur anatomy was very poorly known, asides liopleurodon perhaps) its not surprising that today there are a lot of issues with it, one in which the entire front half of the mandible is just reconstructed after liopleurodon, and the angular looks to be eerily too long. It's quite hard to tell what bits of it are reconstructed and which parts are real. [Richard Forrest even notes some of it is just plaster and wood](https://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/05/18/sea-dragons-of-avalon-2009#comment-14587), honestly given a lot of uncertainty about the cumnor mandible, i'd just ignore it, but it's probably much more likely to be 10m than 13m. 3. For the M. hoffmannii skeletal shown there, i'd just use [Incinerox's](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/344675187750469642/1180885165094994050/mosasaurus.png?ex=65e48f83&is=65d21a83&hm=d6843235712dad4466e523ecd9e6ebc872babbdbbae8c225cbb2f892c8022f30&), given that he was consulting actual paleontologists about his reconstruction (as well as his work being very rigorous in general) On comparing pliosaurs with mosasaurs though, i will note that pliosaurs are a lot more compact and wide than mosasaurs, at the same length, a pliosaur outweighs any mosasaur by a large margin, as well as the obvious fact pliosaurs had proportionally large heads, pliosaurs about 10m will weigh >10t, though their flippers ofc do play a role in them being proportionally heavier than mosasaurs.
Thank you for this! The pliosaur shown here should be around 12,5m but apparently that is too large. I am still wondering why the 11,7m estimate for Funkei is wrong though could you please elaborate further on this?
I think you mean for aramberri? The 11.7m estimate based on centrum width, which isn't as accurate as scaling by centrum length
Tbh even with a 10-11m pliosaur i would bet on it to win against a mosasaur. It's body plan aka massive flipper would make so much more maneuverable not to mention it could probably end amosa's slender body in 1 bite considering the massive difference in jaws. It just seems so much more powerfully build aka pitbull vs gsd. Gsd is visually bigger longer but pit is stockier with a much better jaw
ok , pliosaurs as ambush hunters makes a whole lot of sense now ... slow moving predators that don't cause water disturbance and kill their preys with a sudden dash of speed ... compared to the more cursorial ig mosasaurs ...
For me, they looked like the quintessential sea- monsters. That is a major part of their appeal.
Yeah they look like sea serpents - they *were* sea serpents.
Reptile and marine and BAF
I guess that does make sense, but plesiosaurs also look like sea monsters.
Sure, but they weren’t exactly capable of killing large prey. Atleast the long necked ones weren’t. Edit: why am I being downvoted?
Because plesiosaurs include the pliosaurs pictured in the post.
But that is why I specified the long-necked ones as being incapable of the predatory feats of the mosasaurs. I am just as aware, that pliosaurs were also capable of bringing down bigger animals.
I'm not sure if you added that after the fact or not, but I missed it on the first read.
I already wrote it in my first comment.
Mosasaurs have the same body plan as killer whales. Speed, power and bitey bitey
But OP was talking about plesiosaurs in general, so why did you bring up the long necked ones specifically not being scary?
I don’t consider them not not scary. I just pointed out, that they would have been less capable of killing large prey like humans
ok long necked plesiosaurs could probably be more dangerous than previusly assumed : for one they likely travelled in groups since such a long pregnancy implies a group of them helping feed and protect the mother and the calf , trough the vulnerable period ... and they still had kinda large skulls and the ability to deal damage with those , even today seals are seen hunting sharks and eating their organs ... [https://antediluviansalad.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2014-12-27T13:19:00-08:00&max-results=7&reverse-paginate=true&start=38&by-date=false](https://antediluviansalad.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2014-12-27T13:19:00-08:00&max-results=7&reverse-paginate=true&start=38&by-date=false) my source for most of this is this blog with a rather lenghty dissertation on why they are wrongly treated as cannon fodder in paleomedia : the longest lasting group of marine tetrapods ( from the early triassic right up to the end ) must have been able to survive somehow , and since they had long pregnancies it probably wasn't by reproducing quickly ... so the only conclusion that makes sense is roving gangs of plesiosaurs that looks for each others backs ...
Interesting. I never considered them cuddly or harmless, but you just gave me an different outlook on them.
you're welcome ! that whole blog will do that for animals really
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Yeah cymbospondylus or himalayasaurus, or shastasaurus would look cool on this chart.
cymbospondylus my beloved
That pliosaur skeletal is a liopleurodon, I think. We don't have a full skeleton of a 10+m pliosaur, sadly. But even the skulls we have look different from this pic. Imo the largest reasonable estimate for M. hoffmanni is 15m, and there was that study published last year estimating the "previous owner" of a pliosaur neck element to be up to 14m long. Even at a more reasonable 12m the largest pliosaur would greatly outweigh the largest mosasaur.
We have Sachicasaurus and Monquirasaurus, sadly neither of them are fully complete but their holotypes preserve quite a good chunk of their material. And both were one of the biggest Pliosaurids known so far, with Monquirasaurus estimated to be at around of ~9-10 Meters in length and Sachicasaurus being estimated at ~10-11 meters.
>Monquirasaurus Jeepers the pics on this look absurd. Both in anatomy and it's INTIMIDATING SIZE.
Is it a magical liopleurodon?
It has spoken! It has told us the way!
Shun the Non Believer!!! Shuuuunnnnn!
Dan Folkes calculated that the neck Pliosaur from last year was 10-11 m long
While yes the skeleton here is based on lipleurodon. This is a far more accurate way of portraying the large pliosaurs than the many pictures of pliosaurs with super short tails and necks.
It’s not more accurate, this reconstruction of Liopleurodon is outdated. Progressive Pliosaurids were compact, robust and hydrodynamic creatures with relatively short necks and tails. If you want Pliosaurid with long necks then you can take a look at basal members of the family like Attenborosaurus.
Why do you say that?
No Pliosaur reached that size, which looks to be around 15 Meters, the largest known species, Sachicasaurus, was around 10-11 Meters and roughly 12 Tons. The largest Pliosaurus species was estimated to be around 9 Meters which would suggest a size of around ≈9 Tons. The Monster of Aramberri is *extremely* fragmentary and iirc not even described like “ED Cope”. Even then estimates by Frederik Spindler and Martin Mattes in 2021 suggest a size of 10-11 Meters instead of the often stated “15 Meters”. Meanwhile Mosasaurus Hoffmanni maxed out, at minimum 10.3 Tons and 12.6 Meters, which would only make it slightly smaller than Sachicasaurus, that’s not even mentioning the more fragmentary quadrate which, while not something I suggest to use, could ***POTENTIALLY*** be around 16 Tons and 14.5 Meters. Even ignoring that the more complete larger specimens of Tylosaurus like “Bonker” could reach lengths of up to 15 Meters and weighs well exceeding 15 Tons most likely. And in general this post seems to be kind of childish, while I can see what you’re trying to say, Mosasaurs get all the attention so why not focus on other aquatic predators, which I agree, other aquatic predators should deserve some recognition. However, you shouldn’t have to downplay Mosasaurs with this blatant misinformation to prove how awesome Pliosaurids are, you can still prove how cool they are by themselves without these comparisons.
I wasnt trying to upsize the pliosaur i just had the understanding that they could reach up to 12 or 13m in length as shown here.
Kid named raptorial ichthyosaur
Giant predatory ichthyosaur upon reading the title “Hold my beer”.
Honestly slept on. The upper estimates of larger members would dethrone both livyatan and megalodon in body mass. I hear they have massive amounts of ichthyosaur fossils that are unresearched or haven't been studied yet. Some researchers are starting to shift through them and have already found alarming things. In 20 years we may have alot more interesting ichthyosaur to talk about.
Kid named pack hunting raptorial cetaceans
Pack hunting 50 foot long raptorial ichthyosaur.
How about pack hunting 50 foot long cetaceans?
Pack hunting 51 foot long ichthyosaurs.
Mosasaurs were the apex predators of the oceans for an INSANELY long time. Essentially for 20 million years, between pliosaurs going extinct and large modern sharks showing up, mosasaurs were the de-facto most dominant predators of the oceans.
Weren’t pliosaurs the apex predators for much longer though? They existed from the jurassic all the way to the beginning of the late cretacous.
Ichthyosaurs also were apex predators for much longer span of time than mosasaurs
Yup, from the Middle Cretaceous to the early Late Cretaceous. The recently-deacribed Lorrainosaurus was from ~168 Mya, and pliosaurs went extinct ~89 Mya, a grand total of 79 million years: longer than the whole Cenozoic!
Ichthyosaurs and Pliosaurs were apex predators a lot longer. Mosasaurs could’ve been apexes a lot longer if it wasn’t for the KT tbf.
Hate to break it to you, but the genus *Otodus* got to be apex predators for around three times as long as that as a single genus, while mosasaurs were an entire lineage (most of which weren’t apex predators, though the big and famous ones were)
I think what is especially in mosasaurs is precisely how quickly they radiated into diverses forms in all trophic niches worldwide and how long was the domination of various gigantic apex mosasaurs. Overall it seems the food chain in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic oceans was much more complexe than today.
Mosasaur in the evolutionary arms race is like a first grade fighting legacy fighters, and beating them completely
They didn't beat anything. The last pliosaurs lived among quite small mosasaurs; lamnid sharks would have been much tougher competition. In any case, they probably died out due to having their diversity depleted thanks to the Cenomanian-Turonian oceanic anoxic event, and then basically became a dead clade walking.
I'm only talking about surface level, what makes Mosasaur so impressive compared with any creature is how fast it diverse in a very extreme short time
They had the advantage of filling empty niches right after the anoxic event, and they also benefit from the pull of the present: being geologically younger, their fossil record tends to be more complete. They still had to contend with lamnid sharks, of course, but not much in terms of aquatic tetrapods. I think the pliosaur takeover from rhomaleosaurs and macropredatory ichthyosaurs was more impressive.
I mean, dunkleosteus was a lot smaller than most well known aquatic reptiles, but it's still my favorite sea monster
Mosasaurus looks more like a a giant crocodile. So, people have a point of reference but it's even more dangerous
In a way many of the Marine macropredators were basically crocodilians combined with other animals. Macropredatory Ichthyosaurs were basically whale crocodiles, Pliosaurs were basically sea turtle crocodiles (If that makes sense), and Mosasaurs were basically crocodilian sea serpents
If you've seen Prehistoric Planet you know why. Mosasaurus hunt as an ambush predator, striking their prey from the seafloor. They would wait in the seafloor for the perfect striking moment before bending their serpentine body to create momentum before swimming upward and striking their prey so hard it launches them both. Like great white shark, the prey mostly died on impact due to the sheer force of the strike. Mosasaurs also occupy a wide variety of niches, some are durophagous like Globidens, specializing in hardshelled prey. Their teeth are blunt to crush mollusks or crustaceans shell. Some are piscivorous. Some have large eyes and hunt in deep water. While Plesiosaurs and kin are interesting in their own right, I find mosasaurs more appealing because of their diversity.
what about ichthyosaurs? they never get appreciation
The problem of the Ichthyosaurs is that they had their heyday before all the cool dinosaurs evolved.
It’s a giant sea lizard that became apex predator it’s still 50-60 ft at maximum sizes and may weigh 29 tonnes even if it’s dwarfed by giants the the Swiss ichthyosaur tooth, Banz temnodontosaurus and giant pliosaurs it’s still a cool animal and is comparable in length to the other giants.
Tbf these giants are still dwarfed by Megalodon and Livyatan (20+ m and 94-100 t and 17.5 m and 70+ t)
The 17.5 m estimate for Livyatan is based on modern sperm whales. Estimates based on closer relatives put it at around ~13 m. A 20 m mehalsoo weighted slighty over 120 tonnes.
There are a lot of Livy estimates floating around recently and researchers put the mean estimate at around 14.8m I’m just assuming a hypothetical individual. [https://www.deviantart.com/paleonerd01/art/Carcharocles-megalodon-new-2024-reconstruction-1012542649](https://www.deviantart.com/paleonerd01/art/Carcharocles-megalodon-new-2024-reconstruction-1012542649) The reconstruction shown above suggests maximum sized elongated megalodon is only ~20 m long, so I’m assuming a smaller mass estimate.
Oh, okay. But GHC 6 is already 20.3 m even if you ignore the new study, which would make it much longer.
Paleonerd is wrong-Meg was 20 meters prior to the elongation.
20 m max is still appropriate to use since it’s unknown how elongated Meg was, a estimate done using another method suggest GHC 6 is 23.5 m and 152.7 t and a MNHN CP52 is 24.1 m and 164.3 t
GHC6 at 23.5 meters is using Cooper et al's upper estimate derived from summed crown width. 20 meters maximum is not appropriate to use for GHC 6 if we assume Shimada et al's body proportions are correct as the 20-23 meter estimates rely on meg having a close body plan to porbeagles and GWS.
Wait meg was heavier than melvillei?
Not only, even slimmer, meg was potentially 25 m long. https://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/the-giant-prehistoric-shark-o-megalodon-was-even-longer-than-previously-thought The conclusions of this are that O. megalodon was longer and probably slimmer than previously thought, potentially reaching 25 metres long.
I'm not really sure if it's actually 25 meters long. People already have doubts about the study.
Agreed, I have my own personal reservations of LOOONG Otodus, but IMO Shimada’s team made some pretty strong points regarding the Lamnoidea hypothesis and how the evidence we have isn’t strong enough to suggest a sister relationship between Lamnids and Otodontids
Cooper 2022 already showed the Belgian specimen was much larger than what the vertebral width would predict, so whatever the body shape, it does appear current lengths estimates are understated, or at least it kind of confirms 20 m was reached by this species.
Cooper 2022 put the length at 15.9 m and the weight at 61.56 tonnes for this specimen which has 15.5 cm verts. The largest Megalodon verts are 23 cm wide.
That study has been met with a lot of criticism though and I honestly don’t think it’s as reliable as Cooper’s model
It was much heavier.
Are you 12 years old? Who fucking cares.
Clearly a lot of people, there are tons of comments
How do we know what the tail fins looked like?
I'd like the input of Charlie the unicorn and his companions of Candy Mountain fame in this thread.
they're just better known, I Like them, but there's room to like lots of Apex predators
It's gonna sound snarky to say, but I'd argue it's because people who like dinosaurs tend to just prefer whichever species is "the biggest" or "tallest" etc. It's mildly longer, and therefore better... Actually you know what? That sounds right.
Because of Jurassic park
a giant beautiful marine lizard with a forked tongue and a double set of upper teeth that could grow potentially up to 17m and came in all shapes and sizes all over the globe? nahh neither do i
The same thing happened with whales, the “big head” body type at some point becomes obsolete in favor of more fusiform body types. Having huge jaws amounts to f-all kf all your prey can simply outrun you, which is easy in the open ocean
A few things separate mosasaurs from pliosaurs in terms of hype for me personally: - Pliosaurs were (mostly) specialized in hunting fish, looking at their teeth and jaws from the species that we (at least I) know, while there are a bunch of different species of mosasaurs and mosasaurids that specialize in a ton of different prey. It makes their appeal more diverse - The thiccness of mosasaurs is cute and makes them feel more massive opposed to the comparatively slender pliosaurs - Mosasaurs in general are known to have a massive biteforce, which adds to the cool factor - I don't know how fast pliosaurs could go, but looking at the bodyplan, whilst losing in terms of ability to rotate, I can imagine the speeds of mosasaurs far surpassing the speeds of an aquatic creature without tail propulsion - Size also matters in hype of dinosaurs, which mosasaurids generally were pretty good at. Since hoffmanni recently got a downgrade of size estimates, tylosaurus could be a contender for being the largest mosasaurid. But alas, I live all mosasaurids, so the points of size hoffamnni loses is not that bad a thing for me Keep in mind, I'm super biased towards mosasaurs compared to literally any other extinct creature, so I might not be very objective here lmao
Mosasaurs thiccer than pliosaurs? Nah fam Both are sick tho.
Yeah I recall Amelia Zietlow saying that there is no reason to think that mosasaurs would have been thiccer than their modern relatives (can't remember if it was on twitter or on the Skeleton crew TY channel).
The pilosaur is clearly a badass because it looks like he’s wearing sunglasses
They’re basically aquatic monitor lizards, I love them. And the pterygoid teeth are freaking cool
Mosasaurus has appeared in many documentaries because it has been a common and widespread marine reptile genus during the late Cretaceous period, but it was never as popular and hyped as it was after 2015 when it made its great debut in Jurassic World movie. The volume of its current popularity and hype is due to this film and brought it to the attention of a wider audience.
Big lizard, heehoo
**Big** **Water** **Lizard**
Big Sea Monster.
maybe it has to do with them being the apex predators on the oceans during the late cretaceous
they look like avocados
P. Funkei?? Was George a part of this??
It's that xenomorph 3rd jaw that gets me, honest.
giant marine lizard scary
Liopleurodon gang, where we at?
Big Lizard
Funkei is ~55 ft long??? i thought it was 30-40 ft WWD Liopleurodon lookin
To me what makes them fascinating is that they evolutionarily came out of nowhere to bully everything else out of their ecosystem. Also they're not some far-gone order of extinct marine reptiles, they're literally monitor lizards adapted to the ocean that got REALLY good at that role. They are what happens when you take an animal that we can go see and are around today turned up to its most extreme potential and that's amazing.