Some of these aquatic reptiles of the dinosaur era had dozens of individual bones running down their long necks.
Millions of years ago, as dinosaur giants were stomping around on land, other giant reptiles were dominating the oceans — and some of them, like plesiosaurs and similar animals, grew extremely long, snake-like necks.
Initially, the researchers were not sure whether C. xiangensis was a pachypleurosaur because its neck seemed too short —some of its relatives from later in the Triassic period sported necks more than 80% the length of their torsos, the authors noted in the study, published on Aug. 31 in the journal BMC Ecology and Evolution. But despite its relatively short neck, the researchers determined that the fossil was indeed, a pachypleurosaur.
They found that the ratio of the length of their torsos to necks went from about 40% to 90% within roughly 5 million years.
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