The shocking part that upgrades the Jurassic 'snake head' into a monster

New research shows that it is the unbelievable monstrous characteristics of fossilized snakehead skeletons that have helped it become the haunt of an ocean of monsters through the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

According to SciTech Daily, paleontologists from the University of Bristol (UK) have modeled the bodies of many marine species such as plesiosaurs (also known as snake-headed lizards or dragons), ichthyosaurs (fish lizards) or ichthyosaurs), extinct ancient whales and modern whales and dolphins.

Among them, the cephalopods are most prominent with their monstrous shapes, many are not just a form of long-necked dinosaur, but truly like a monster snake attached to the dinosaur's body, the neck can be longer than the body. several times.

Elasmosaurus "perfect body" dragon head snake portrait

According to Dr Susana Gutarra Díaz from the University of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences and the National History Museum in London, the team was particularly interested in long necks and found that they were at the "optimal limit" - the neck. About twice their body length, these ancient monsters would have achieved minimal resistance while swimming.

One of the cephalopods with a body of "perfect proportions" mentioned above is Elasmosaurus with a famous 6 meter long neck, while the body is only about 3 meters.

That is, the absurdly monstrous neck has "upgraded" the dragon heads, explaining the terrible swimming speed, the ability to hunt in the water extremely accurately even though the total body weight is up to ten thousand. ton.

The cephalopod is estimated to have been born about 245 million years ago, in the Tam Diep period, a "brother" to dinosaurs but lived in the water, 4 legs turned into fins. Dinosaurs flourished from the Jurassic period, continuing to dominate through the Cretaceous until the day they became extinct by the "dinosaur-killing asteroid" Chicxulub.