Liopleurodon
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Liopleurodon was an enormous "Pliosaur" from the Jurassic period, living between 165-150 million years ago.
Liopleurodon is the only Mesozoic marine reptile to be close to matching the largest whales of today, it is the second largest creature to live behind only the blue whale. Its teeth were twice as long as those of Tyrannosaurus rex, making it a formidable predator. Its teeth were arranged in a distinctive rosette at the end of its snout.
Liopleurodon fossils are relatively common and well preserved in several marine deposits throughout Europe. It was a type of pliosaur, or short-necked plesiosaur. Pliosaurs are a group of plesiosaurs, one of a type of reptiles that returned to the sea. Plesiosaurs appeared in the Early Jurassic period and rapidly split into two major groups: long-necked forms like Cryptoclidus, and short-necked forms, or pliosaurs like Liopleurodon. They died out along with the dinosaurs, at the end of the Late Cretaceous.
They reached sizes of 15 m (50 ft). Exaggeration by the media caused them to be viewed as almost 25 m (80 ft) in length, an error which was perpetuated in Walking with Dinosaurs.
In Walking With Dinosaurs its food consisted of anything from Ophthalmosaurus to Cryptoclidus.
