Although dinosaurs did not return to the sea, plenty of other reptiles did. Some of the most familiar are the plesiosaurs, large animals with a barrel-like body and a long snaky neck. Plesiosaurs lived on fish, capturing them with a mouthful of spiky teeth. Their flexible neck could probably shoot out like a striking snake to catch their prey. Some species had an enormously long neck that was as flexible as a snake’s. Plesiosaurs did not have a flexible body. They rowed themselves along by waving their fin-like front and rear limbs up and down.
How did plesiosaurs breed?
Unlike ichthyosaurs, which have been found with embryos inside their remains, there is little evidence of how plesiosaurs reproduced. They probably bred like modern turtles, hauling themselves out of the water with their flippers and laying eggs in the sand.
Unfortunately, although their fossilized remains are not uncommon, neither eggs nor newly hatched babies have yet been found, so their breeding habits remain a mystery.
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