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Epic Evolution: Plesiosaurs’ Astonishing 5-Million-Year Transformation to Mega-Necked Monsters!
Two skeletons of plesiosaur ancestors helped explain the puzzle of the incredibly long necks of these extinct reptiles. This unusual anatomical feature evolved very quickly, in just “5 million years.”
This was one of the most famous scientific mistakes. In 1867, near Fort Wallace in Kansas, military surgeon Theophilus Turner stumbled upon the fossilized remains of an extinct creature. He found only a few vertebrae but suspected that he had come across an important discovery. He informed the young and ambitious paleontologist Edward Cope about it.
With Turner’s assistance, Cope located the rest of the fossils and reconstructed the appearance of the ancient beast. He then named it Elasmosaurus platyurus. Unfortunately, the scientist made a grave error during reconstruction. He mistook what was the creature’s neck for its tail and vice versa.
The exceptionally long necks of plesiosaurs
So, Cope’s Elasmosaurus was reconstructed in reverse. When the error came to light, Cope tried to salvage as many copies of his erroneous article as possible. However, his competitors, particularly another paleontologist named Othniel Charles Marsh, ensured that the Elasmosaurus mistake would not be…
