Heads down for plesiosaurs, according to an article in New Scientist, 4 No 2006, p17.
Leslie Noe of the Sedgwick Museum of Cambridge, UK has studied the way the neck bones of a plesiosaur named Muraenosaurus fit together and worked out how flexible the creature’s neck would have been. He concluded the animal’s neck was most flexible when it head was pointing down, but it could not have held its head up high out of the water. This suggests that the animal used its neck as a feeding tube to enable it to collect food from the sea floor.
New Scientist suggests this also means that this creature was not the Loch Ness monster, which is often portrayed as a long necked creature holding its head up in swan-like fashion.
Editorial Comment: A neck that was suitable for gathering food in a head down position indicates that this animal was a grazing animal rather than a hunting animal. This fits with Genesis, which tells us all animals were originally created to eat plants. It may also give us a clue as to why these animals died out. After the catastrophic destruction of the sea floor during Noah’s flood as the fountains of the deep burst open, the amount of food growing on the sea floor would have been drastically reduced and this been the start of the demise of plesiosaurs. Post Noahic season effects on the shallow water around continents would have also affected their life style.
Evidence News 24 April 2007
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