Tanystropheus

From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.

Tanystropheus was a 6 metre (20 foot) long reptile that dated from the middle Triassic period. The main feature that stands out about this animal is its grotesquely elongated neck which was 3 metres (10 feet) long, practically larger than its body and tail combined. However, surprisingly it had only 10 neck vertebrae. With this incredibly long but relatively stiff neck, Tanystropheus has been often proposed and rescontructed as an aquatic or semi-aquatic reptile, which might have lived near the shore and eaten fish or shellfish. However Tanystropheus lacked any obvious water adaptations.

Fossils of this creature have been found in Europe and the Middle East.

External links

• BBC reconstruction of Tanystropheus (assumes the animal was aquatic) (http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/seamonsters/factfiles/tanystropheus.shtml?img3)

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) Tanystropheus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanystropheus) version history (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tanystropheus&action=history) GNU Free Documentation Lizenz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License) CC-by-sa (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/)

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