{"id":110953,"date":"2020-08-06T13:02:56","date_gmt":"2020-08-06T20:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/fossil-mystery-solved-super-long-necked-reptiles-lived-in-the-ocean-not-on-land"},"modified":"2020-08-06T13:02:56","modified_gmt":"2020-08-06T20:02:56","slug":"fossil-mystery-solved-super-long-necked-reptiles-lived-in-the-ocean-not-on-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/fossil-mystery-solved-super-long-necked-reptiles-lived-in-the-ocean-not-on-land","title":{"rendered":"Fossil mystery solved: Super-long-necked reptiles lived in the ocean, not on land"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/fossil-mystery-solved-super-long-necked-reptiles-lived-in-the-ocean-not-on-land.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A fossil called <i>Tanystropheus<\/i> was first described in 1852, and it\u2019s been puzzling scientists ever since. At one point, paleontologists thought it was a flying pterosaur, like a pterodactyl, and that its long, hollow bones were phalanges in the finger that supported the wing. Later on, they figured out that those were elongated neck bones, and that it was a twenty-foot-long reptile with a ten-foot neck: three times as long as its torso. Scientists still weren\u2019t sure if it lived on land or in the water, and they didn\u2019t know if smaller specimens were juveniles or a completely different species\u2014until now. By CT-scanning the fossils\u2019 crushed skulls and digitally reassembling them, researchers found evidence that the animals were water-dwelling, and by examining the growth rings in bones, determined that the big and little <i>Tanystropheus<\/i> were separate species that could live alongside each other without competing because they hunted different prey.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve been studying <i>Tanystropheus<\/i> for over thirty years, so it\u2019s extremely satisfying to see these creatures demystified,\u201d says Olivier Rieppel, a paleontologist at the Field Museum in Chicago and one of the authors of a new paper in <i>Current Biology<\/i> detailing the discovery.<\/p>\n<p><i>Tanystropheus<\/i> lived 242 million years ago, during the middle Triassic. On land, dinosaurs were just starting to emerge, and the sea was ruled by giant reptiles. For a long time, though, scientists weren\u2019t sure whether <i>Tanystropheus<\/i> lived on land or in the water. Its bizarre body didn\u2019t make things clear one way or the other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A fossil called Tanystropheus was first described in 1852, and it\u2019s been puzzling scientists ever since. At one point, paleontologists thought it was a flying pterosaur, like a pterodactyl, and that its long, hollow bones were phalanges in the finger that supported the wing. Later on, they figured out that those were elongated neck bones, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}