Evolution of Plesiosaurs
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 มิ.ย. 2024
- The most Iconic sea creatures of the Jurassic period were unquestionably the plesiosaurs with their giant sizes, tiny heads and long slender necks. Their story dates back to the previous period, the triassic, but they were rare and obscure with there being many other strange marine reptiles that filled the oceans. However, at the turn of the jurassic the other marine reptiles would go extinct but the plesiosaurs became the dominant ocean going animals. So how did they become such a success when their peers went extinct
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Sources:
www.researchgate.net/publicat...
royalsocietypublishing.org/do...
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24256...
www.nature.com/articles/ncomm...
www.jstor.org/stable/3595510
"Seeing incredible success..."
*cuts to drawing of Plesiosaur being eaten*
I mean, the animal eating it is also technically a plesiosaur
@Michael Hamm its a mosasaur right
@@martinpagac7422 Pliosaur
@@rgio1885 yeah now that ive seen the video i know:D
@@martinpagac7422 Nope. It looks a lot like a Pliosaurus, a member of Pliosauridae, which is one of the subgroups of Plesiosauria, along Plesiosauroidea (and a few others)
Mosasaurs are not closely related to Plesiosaurs at all, aside from both being reptiles afaik
Edit: I now see that I am far too late. Apologies
This channel is like having a time machine, the ultimate window to a different time
Kind of scary for me reflecting. I recall being a very young child first understanding my inner nerd learning about dinosaurs in my public school on herman street and then for some reason I got taused around a bunch of groups to conform to thier ever changing low standards of a low so called evolution to now find myself back as a nerd appreating myself and not wanting to be swayed by sales people but open to true fellow life scientists
A foggy window... cause you never know if the pictures are exactly accurate
I love this Placodont animals most of all sea reptiles.
It is so very pity that they died out at the end of Triassic....
@@Tyra-2534 I know right. I would have loved to see them when they were around
@@nathanmciver6737 it is a wonderful fascination that has persisted into my adulthood
I love how this channel answers my random "how did this animal evolve" questions
@moo moo same, they're both great
This video summed up reasonable answers to my decades of questions about how such a strange marine reptile thrived.
I used to think that they hunted like eels, but with a bigger body. Sneaking up on fish by pretending to be the same size via the long neck is a very interesting theory.
The Jaws / mouth Evolution video was sheer brilliance
after these reptiles died out, mammals did the same. Land mammals evolve to live under the sea and some grew to gigantic sizes, e.g. blue whales(largest known animal in entire Earth's history). Other mammals include dolphins and sea otters. Birds, the only descendants from dinosaurs also adapted to live in seas. E.g. penguins. However they are not 100% aquatic and still need to step foot on lands.
I love how this channel about evolution talks about evolution
I've been watching all your videos with my nephew when my sister drops him off. He's 6 years old and he has a better understanding of evolutionary biology than most adults in part because of the great work you do explaining these things in terms that even a 6 year old can understand. I have to pause the video to explain certain concepts sometimes, but man, he just gets it most of the time. He's always asking me why there "aren't more dinosaur shows" and I always tell him that there will be more in the future.
I imagine these aren't easy to make, they clearly require a decent amount of research, script writing, and video editing/art creation. Once the financial burden of COVID lifts off my family's collective chest, I'll definitely be diverting some of that cash to your patreon. Thank you for producing such great educational content - my nephew and I really do enjoy it, and we both learn a lot every time you upload.
What a smart kid! A lot of the kids I see who are into dinosaurs are unfortunately only familiar with the outdated concepts… but your nephew seems like a super smart kid if he understands evolution at this age!
what a heartwarming comment… little dude is 9 now, is he still super into dinos?
"Incredible Success" *while getting absolutely chomped.
The one chomping is also a plesiosaur albeit a short necked one
Hahahahahahah
@@killerkoffee4619 thats a mosasaur Buddy
@@killerkoffee4619 maybe a pliosaur, but still not plesiosaur
long as it got chomped after it reproduced that counts as evolutionary success
Your format is perfect; the intro, the music, your voice is so relaxing to listen to, the presentation of information is perfectly paced, the art is excellent (shout out to the artists) & your outro isn’t obnoxious & always let’s me gently slip back into the real world.
Ever since I discovered your channel & watched every previous video I’ve jumped on the opportunity to relax in the dark to each new upload, I think you’re really nailing it here!
Very relevant remarks. This is one great YTer and I am a big fan too!
I completely agree
Spot on
ah i see im not the only one that watches this shit at night right before sleep xD
@@rudivomschauerberg6344absolutely!😂
I've seen simulations of plesiosaurs swimming by using all four flippers and it must have been a stunning sight to see those ghastly toothed little heads sticking out of those beautifully flapping and "flying" bodies .
Stunning...but also absolutely terrifying!
@@GerardWay4President like most extinct animal species.
I don’t know why but these videos are just so enjoyable, I love em
Extremely pleasant and calming voice + eloquent + informative + interesting... What's not to enjoy
How do you not now why? I really think you just told yourself you don't know why and didn't even try to think of why, which is highly idiotic.
Yeeeeeessssss. Very relaxing
@@valeriavagapova Better than most tv shows these days.
Learning is rewarding - understanding how we came to exist as we do today is definitely interesting and that's good for the mind. The enjoyment you feel is your brain rewarding you for expanding your understanding of the world. We're inherently curious creatures, we're wired to enjoy this sort of thing.
Nowadays, the modern day Leopleurodon gives directions to wandering unicorns to help them complete their mystical quests.
“It’s a magical leopleurodon, Charlie!
Yeah, Charlie! Magical leopleurodon!”
I don't get it.
@@thunderlizardstudios2645 ever watched “Charlie The Unicorn?” It’s a classic by FilmCow.
@@drsharkboy6568 oh
@@thunderlizardstudios2645 The joke is that I'm old, and so are the people who get the joke.
Imagine how alien earth must have looked back than
at first i read, imagine how the aliens must have looked back then, and i thought now that's a whimsical question haha
@@milu3779 that's actually a good question, primitive extinct alien ancestors..
Probably not that alien, just very exotic
@@milu3779 Well, here's what was happening on Snaiad back in the Mesozoic:
250-183 million years ago:
Modern “Vertebrates” with four legs, two heads and hydraulic muscles diversify and dominate most terrestrial ecosystems. Most of them, however, belong to archaic lineages such as Archaeognaths, Tridactyls, Tetradactyls and Polydactyls. Continents approach present positions. Rampant Hexapods still hold out in Oroland, then an island continent.
183 million years ago:
Mass extinctions claim many Archaeognath, Tridactyl and Polydactyl species. Tetradactyls are wiped out, Hexapods almost so. Evolution of Spinostomes and Lophophids. The continent of Thalassia forms after an orgy of mid-ocean volcanism. Declining forests of giant trees give rise to first pinnacle ranges.
183-80 million years ago:
Spinostomes and a second radiation of Polydactyls dominate most ecosystems. First Jetocete-like animals develop. Most “Vertebrate” herbivores still lack well-developed food processing systems. Arthrognathans diversify underwater, one group launches a second invasion of land almost 800 million years after terrestrial Arthrognathans die out. Poorly-understood “vertebrate” groups colonize Thalassia, the origin of Monoanticherans, Titans and Tromobrachids. Sproglands expand over mainland continents. Indigenous tetrapod “Vertebrates” replace Hexapods on Oroland, still an island.
80-40 million years ago:
Many modern “vertebrate” lineages, including advanced herbivores, evolve. The final flowering of advanced Spinostomes on mainland continents is followed closely by their rapid decimation in the face of new competition.
@@parmaxolotl silly me i had forgotten all about Snaiad :D
Pliosaurs might be my favorite animals of all time.
Just impossibly huge and scary creatures, but still awe-inspiring.
Some ichthyosaurs may have actually survived for a little bit in the cretaceous, Cetarthrosaurus among others may have clung on for a while before their group's complete demise.
poorf?
@@Thejghostodst Cetarthrosaurus was dated to the Albian to Cenomanian stage of the early cretaceous.
Malawania also seems to have lived up to the middle Early Cretaceous (132-125 Ma), Platypterygius even longer, living up to Late Cenomanian (94.3 Ma).
@@philloraptor8205 yes, at that point though the group had be becoming increasingly rare. Honestly moth light should do a video on the evolution of ichthyosaurs.
There is some evidence that one lineage persisted for some time but they were quite specialized and didn't rediversify like they had previously suggesting they had quite low genetic plasticity and eventually probably just faded away from competition. That said who knows when you have those dead walking taxa sometimes they are good enough to persist long after you would have thought due to the poor representation of the fossil record.
That said none has been found past the Cenomanian-Turonian boundary or Anoxia event or Bonarelli event which seems to have been linked directly to the Caribbean LIP(Large Igneous Province).
So while one lineage did survive the earlier extinction that wiped out their kin they probably were wiped out along with a lot of other marine reptiles in the next mass extinction. Interestingly that is also when the spinosaurids vanish from the fossil record too which suggests their aquatic diet lead them to face the same end as many other marine reptile groups when low oxygen content caused marine ecosystems to largely collapse.
That event that likely did finish off the last Ichthyosaurs and spinosaurids however opened the way for the Mosasaurs to rapidly diversify into empty niches and claim the oceans as the top predators up until a major asteroid blasted into the coastline of Laurentia/North America.
I would love to see a video about the evolution of Icthyosaurs and their impact on their environment
PBS Eons already did video about it.
@@ExtremeMadnessX I saw but their delivery is a little over the top
@@pattonramming1988 PBS Eons also tends to be less accurate than this channel, they've made some truly inexcusable errors as a result of poor research.
@@bkjeong4302 I had no idea about that. Do you remember an example?
@@nowwhat8209
- taking the 1500kg mass estimate for Simbakubwa at face value despite the fact it was developed from a methodology known to be flawed.
- claiming ground sloths in North American went extinct because things became too cold, when in fact they went extinct as things were getting WARMER (meaning they were more likely wiped out by humans, since the climate was turning in their favour). Then claiming that South American ground sloths got huge to specialize for living in cold climates and became extinct because things got too warm (citing Megatherium as an example), while ignoring that a) Megatherium actually lived in warm climates (again, a likely human-driven extinction here for this reason), and that b) there were plenty of small/medium-sized sloths in South America (and one giant one in North America), so it’s wrong to claim SA ground sloths in general became large and cold-specialized.
- Their megalodon video originally claimed that in the Pliocene, newly evolved cetacean competitors like Livyatan and orcas contributed to megalodon going extinct, ignoring that a) cetacean competition was not this new unstoppable force, but something that had been a factor sharks had been handling since the Late Eocene, before megalodon even existed, and that raptorial cetaceans were actually going extinct left and right towards the end of meg’s existence (and likely for the same reasons that later killed off megalodon), b) Livyatan evolved in the Miocene, not the Pliocene, and that it actually went extinct at around the start of the Pliocene (a couple million years BEFORE megalodon did), and c) from the available fossil evidence, orcas did not become raptorial predators until after megalodon and all the earlier raptorial cetaceans were gone (the only orca remains that come close to the right age belong to Orcinus citoniensis, and this is a much smaller animal than living orcas and with teeth far less suited for eating large prey; even if we include hunting in groups, this thing likely wasn’t competing with megalodon for prey). Do note that PBS Eons may have realized this mistake, because these issues seem to have been removed.
- They parrot the claim of borophagine canids being outcompeted by cats despite the fact this hypothesis never made any sense, because cats (including large-bodied ones) entered North America at the start of the Middle Miocene, before borophagines even became a dominant group of large predators. Borophagines had been handling competition with cats since before they actually became apex predators and they managed just fine, so the idea competition from cats outcompeted them makes little sense.
- Same with their terror bird video-the idea of North American predators outcompeting South American predators during the Great American Biotic Interchange has been mostly overturned, as the South American predator guild (especially apex predators) had been in severe decline since the Late Miocene and all but collapsed around 3MYA, prior to the main pulse of the GABI that allowed their competitors to enter South America. At best, competition from North American competitors was a minor-secondary factor in Titanis going extinct, and cannot be blamed for killing off terror birds as a group-they were already on death’s door before that point from climate-related reasons.
- In fact, pretty much all of PBS Eon’s arguments in various videos about animals outcompeting and displacing other animals at the group level are parroting poorly supported or even outright disproven hypotheses that only have stuck around due to the fact they’ve become memetic, with nobody bothering to point out all the flaws with these hypotheses.
Hidden diamond of TH-cam
Me: Oh look at the cute Nessie. Dorrie the dinosaur is so cute in mario 64
Me, after thinking about being in the water with one of these things: AHHHHHHH
What about plessie from 3D world? She's even named after the plesiosaur.
Just think of Lapras
I always figured Nothosaurs were the precursors to Plesiosaurs when I first heard about them. This was fun to learn how the whole process went along.
"However, contrary to their noodle-neck 19th century paleo-art more recent study of their fossils appear quite stiff, with a limited range of movement" ^ why this channel is so good, gotta update and fact check!
every time i watch one of these videos i'm like "that's my new favorite dinosaur"
But it’s ain’t a dinosaur
Marine reptile XD
Lol easy mistake to make.
My guess of the long neck is for supercavitation, like swimming inside a bubble rather than swimming in the water. Some sea-birds do this while diving, and Penguins are master of such thing. Fish uses the whole body to generate thrust, supercavitation reduce the drag but also propulsion, which doesn't work for fish. Flipper swimmers, however, can have their body inside the bubble while the fins outside the bubble for propulsion. I think Plesiosaurs may look like an oversized version of Penguin, swim near the water surface at a very fast speed. They're too heavy to jump out the surface, but using their head to go up-and-down the water surface to breathe and bring-in more bubbles for swimming.
That must have really been a sight to see!
I love this theory, thanks for painting that picture in my mind haha
Supercavitation? Its an animated dinosaur! Time to stop believing all this dinosaur rubbish!
@@Yatukih_001looks guys I found the idiot
@@Yatukih_001 I mean, it's not even a dinosaur...
As a little kid I used to always draw Elasmosaurus doing battle with its arch-enemy Tylosaurus, the same way Tyrannosaurus always had to do battle with Triceratops.
You should do an evolution of the deep sea, it's actually surprising diverse.
Cosmic Arc yes!
How exactly do we know anything about how the deep sea has developed over time? Since we can’t dig on the ocean floor yet
It's blowing my mind that turtles are the closest living relatives of plesiosaurs, I had no clue
What about tortoises?
may be may not be.
@@ritushree6504 This is where I love science.
@@blondbraid7986 tortoises are a type of turtle
May not be. They’re also thought to be anapsids.
These videos are so relaxing. Whoever makes these is a creative master
Whenever I see a new video I click.. like a moth.. to a light... you see... do you see what I did there...
It's a liopleurodon Charlie; a magical liopleurodon.
Shun the nonbeliever! Shun! Shhhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuunnn.
He’s showing us the wayyyy!
No, no it isn't. For the last time, I'm not a fricking unicorn!
This is gonna be a gamble but Moth Light Media, do you remember me? You once commented on one of my earlier Jurassic Park videos. This is what introduced me to your channel because you asked me to check out your channel. This was when you had less than 10k subscribers.
OH BOY, a new episode on the evolution of plesiosaurs!😀
i hope you can do a video with the evolution of sirenians, i feel that they´re the most ignored marine mammal when looking about their evolutionary history
arent they like underwater elephants
Your channel is my favourite podcast while I lunch
can we talk about the plausibility of larger muscles or blubber storage around their necks which would make plesiosaurs more torpedo shaped and better insulated?
The quality of your content is so incredible. Right on track, please keep up the good work
I loce your content ! I just was browsing the history of the Ichtiosaurus whom you mentioned many times before in your videos and perfeclty timed i get the notification and started watching right away. Keep up the good work!
This is such a calming channel. I love putting your videos on in the background while I work bc then I can passively learn facts about all the animals and animal questions I was obsessed with as a kid
Thank you very much for spending effort and time on making these videos for us
This was a terrific, quite precise video. I especially enjoyed the analysis of the biophysics of the long necks of plesiosaurs such as elasmosaurus.
I like your videos. They teach me things that I never knew about. They are also informative. Nice video and keep up the good work :)
I kept losing track of what you were saying and just watching your editing. Love the realistic static background with the overlay/s with the slow, simple pan and zoom of the drawings. I rarely see this effect, and you use it so well. Now I got to rewatch and actually listen to it!
Nobody:
Thumbnail: *C H O N K Y L I ZA R D*
I love this channel so much ❤
I think the long necked plesiosaurs are pretty underrated. They are always just depicted as pliosaur and mosasaur bait or pursuers of small fish/squid. Something like an elasmosaurus has big moray eel like teeth and heavily reinforced skull. Like an eel its going to be tearing chunks out of things.
My thoughts exactly. There is evidence that a elasmosaur swallowed a juvenile mosasaur from stomach contents. But I'm sure such a massive animal with a 2 foot skull with large teeth could attack small mosasaurs as well as wounded animals
Your two comments suddenly made me want to be a plesiosaur. They’re badass!
I have not watched your videos in a long time, watching it again feels so nostalgic.
Good video! Easy to understand and kept my attention. Narrator has a nice voice, good for this kind of thing!
God, I love your videos. The information about evolution they contain blows my mind. Keep up the great work 👍
What a superb channel! I just love my window on the past!
Excellent and informative video once again!
amazing work as always !
I look forward to every upload from moth light
Congratulations on 109 000 subscribers! You making really good work and I hope you will continue to all the way past 1 090 000 subscribers!
Your videos are so soothing, for me they're an escape from 2020
Ok , they might have also used their neck to reduce water displacment , basically whenever a marine predator rushes towards a prey the water displacment moves the prey out of the way , rising the need for efficient ways to catch fish , kind of like the suction feeding of many fish or the projectile jaws of the goblin shark ...
Yes i watch biblaridion
Possibly the small size of the head and the long distance to the main body makes the head appear like a small fish to other fish.
@@johnsamu yeah , it might be a reason , altought idk if a fish might have mistaked the head for a fish ,
but it's very likely we'll never really know ...
did a project on plesiosaur evolution last semester. wich I had seen this video first. excellent work!
One of your best vids yet
This is the longest, most in depth video on ichthyosaurus.. I am so thankful for this video & channel! I can't get enough paleontology on the TH-cam! & I'm too broke & busy to go to college & learn (yet) ❤️🥰
Always happy when your videos are out
Amazing video, keep it up!
this was great! thank you
Random thought:
If the long neck is able to bend downwards easier than other directions, and the long neck extends its reach, could it have been an ambush predator that specialized in eating things off the sea floor from enough distance that the prey didn't recognize it as a threat? Requires that the downward bending is also capable of striking fast.
your the one of the best channel that i listen to, love to fallow you ,keep working hard to raise up knowleg and fight against ignorance iam a medical scientist but love to hear and listen to other field of scientific data(evolution,ancient civilization ,astromy origine of language and many more)i just can stop to learn about everything
Very interesting topic, good job
Thanks for information
I didn't even knew what plesiosaurios where before this, thanks
Great video
Now this is a must watch!
Plesiosaurs have to be the most terrifying animal to ever exist, but they’re so cool! Thank you!
Nessie, Nessie, where for art thou Nessie?
Great, Great video!
I like to think trilobites live in the deep, deep ocean floor depths.
Remember the coelacanth?
And out in the vast ocean desert waters, far from land and shipping routes, ichthyosaurs play.
Excellent! So many videos avoid marine reptiles because of the many phylogenetic gaps in their history. Awesome to learn more about them.
positively fascinating!
Thanks for providing this! Note: over a year ago, I read an article (don't remember which magazine provided it), showing good evidence that some ichthyosaurs made it far into the cretaceous.
Thanks
I love Your channel
shoutout to Dmitry Bogdanov for drawing everything that’s ever existed
does his patreon have transcripts for his videos? because if it does i might become a patron lol
Imagine going through millions of years of evolution just to go extinct.
just wait
Sharks have existed for at least 420 million years, surviving a number of mass extinctions. But it doesn't seem like they'll survive us.
Marko Ellis Mrdjenovic nah they definitely will. They’re populations are sadly plummeting, but deep sea shark populations have gone almost completely unscathed. They will survive us :)
@@olivera6743 That is good to know but even if the deep sea sharks survive, having all the other species die out will relegate sharks to a peripheral niche - not the widespread group affecting marine ecosystems to the extent they are today.
this is the way
I like how you discuss the "extraordinary" success of Plesiosaurs accompanied by a drawing of a Plesiosaur being eatien by a Mosasaur...
It;'s being eaten by a pliosaur....which is itself a plesiosaur.
Copied comment
Love it
I always loved the Pokemon Lapras because it looks like a cuddly Plesiosaur :)
It is my favourite Pokémon for that reason as well.
Dimitry Bogdanov keeping strong at it.
Plesiosaur: "I'm gonna evolve a long neck to hunt schools of fish and bottom-feeders efficiently"
Pliosaur: "Cool. I'm gonna evolve a short neck to have a big skull to act as a guillotine to take out long necks"
Plesiosaur: "Wait WHAT"
Pliosaur: "Don't worry about it"
Love the intro
It's been a long way, without my friend,and I'm tell you all about when I see you again.
Always found it strange that the mythical Loch Ness Monster was described as possibly being a plesiosaur. For a start, they were air breathers, so we'd see them sticking their heads out of the water frequently.....add that to the fact that the Loch was only formed around 10,000 years ago, and Dinosaurs have been extinct far longer.
The way Plesiosaurs breathed was also very interesting, as the likely just stuck their heads out of the water vertically, unlike the common depiction of the whole body floating on top of the water
I found the comment!
surprised how obscure nothosaurs are today despite such iconic animals as plesiosaurs evolving from them, regarding the theory about plesiosaurs being stem-turtles of a type I instantly thought of Jules Verne describing a plesiosaur as "a snake pulled through a turtle shell" in his novel "Journey to the Centre of the Earth"
Yay!
Love this channel for illuminating fascinating animals and the ecospheres they inhabited. Modern day animals didn't come on the scene because they were "better" or smarter, but because climate changed or things just became "unfair."
Great video as usual. Can you make a video about how the number of chromosomes change in evolution? Thanks for your great work
So plesiosaurs, like dinosaurs, became dominant because the End-Triassic Mass Extinction killed off the former dominant clades.
Plesiosaurs actually varied extensively in dentition and jaw structure even excluding the pliosaurs; elasmosaurids, for example, had stout, rugged dentition (to the point they resemble that of large crocodiles) along with more robust skulls (in several cases developing shorter snouts), while cryptoclidids went the opposite direction, with relatively frail jaws and teeth.
P. funkei was a bit less than 9m long, the largest pliosaurs are Pliosaurus macromerus, Sachicasaurus and Kronosaurus queenslandicus at 10-11m in length.
Walking with monsters on its way to make Liopleurodon absolutely huge
Please do a video on the seahorse! I wanna know how this weird thing shares a branch on the fish family tree.
“Known as lizard flippers”
*my over tired brain*
Sick dinosaur kick flips
you are underrated
Long stiff necks underwater, interesting puzzle. Aquatic equivalent of ant-eaters, maybe, jamming their heads down gaps in huge coral formations to pull out prey?
Great video. Are you interested in doing one on turtle evolution?
Hey can u do a video of the evolution of toucans they r my fav animals and i really really wanna know more about their history
I love marine paleontology! And, I cannot wait until sufficient scientific evidence is finally brought to light to prove that plesiosaurs, or at least animals of very similar morphology, are still alive in the world today. I feel certain that such will be the case, eventually. I love those weird, squiggle-necked lizard-whales.
Thank you for the informative video! Best of luck to you. --N
You should make a video that elaborates on the extinction of icthyosaurs and stegosaurs!
Hey Mothlight, can we get a video on Seahorses?
“There are no animals like plesiosaurs still living” EXCEPT Nessie in Loch Ness! Hahaha!
6:05 One advantage of having a long neck is being able to hunt small creatures hidden in little caves and under rocks.
Videoslike this really make me wish these animals were still alive.
Old lizard flippers had one hell of run.
*I FUCKING LOVE PLESIOSAURS*