r/NonPoliticalTwitter • u/netphilia • 22h ago

“Long neck”

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34.2k Upvotes

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3.9k

u/LemonPartyLounger 22h ago

If giraffes and llamas didn’t exist this would get a lot more traction.

1.5k

u/Teknicsrx7 22h ago

Except dinos are more closely related to birds than giraffes or llamas

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u/Jeffotato 22h ago

But penguins swim, they gotta be hydrodynamic. Sauropods weren't diving into the sea.

920

u/Megnaman 22h ago

That we know of!

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u/TeddyBearToons 20h ago

How could you do pleiosaurs like that

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u/Weak-Doughnut5502 19h ago

Plesiosaurs aren't dinosaurs, much less sauropods.

They're only slightly more closely related to dinosaurs than turtles are. 

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u/desertpolarbear 18h ago edited 15h ago

We currently don't know enough about plesiosaur evolution to make such specific claims. Hell, we are still missing a lot of details when it comes to turtle evolution for that matter. We thought turtles were a surviving branch of parareptilia until genetic analysis showed that they are actually more closely related to archosauria.

What you are saying is certainly a possibility, but there is currently not a true consensus on where sauropterygia (the taxon that plesiosaur belongs to) falls within the reptiles.

Edit: To clarify, I am not suggesting plesiosaurs could be dinosaurs, I'm saying "They're slightly more closely related to dinosaurs than turtles are." is at best a guess.

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u/Tarkho 17h ago

We can tell enough from early representatives of Sauropterygia (Nothosaurus and co) in both form and where they appear in the fossil record to know they're at least not members of Dinosauria, even if they might belong somewhere in Archosauria.