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Plesiozaurus were livebearers! Marine reptile fossil of a pregnant was exposed to Los Angeles

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The discovery of a fossil plesiozaur, with its well-formed embryo-old 78 million years, a copy of unique marine reptile shows that this does not lay eggs but gives birth live, according to a study published Thursday in Science magazine.

Plesiozaurul adult - a polycotylus latippinus - a length of 4.7 meters and four fins.

Reptile lived in the same time as dinosaurs in the Mesozoic (after the 251-65 million years) and had a fairly developed embryo, with ribs, five vertebrae, pelvis and bones formed fins.

Robin O'Keefe, a biologist at Marshall University (West Virginia), and Luis Chiappe, director of the Dinosaurs Museum and Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, where the "double fossil" was exposed, believes that this is the first evidence that plesiozaurii gives birth live, not lay eggs.

D Though this type of birth has been documented in several other groups of Mesozoic aquatic reptiles, experts had no evidence that living plesiozaurii gives birth.

Researchers have established that were unique among reptiles plesiozaurii prehistoric water because one baby were born at a time. Instead, the baby was large at birth.

According to these paleontologists, it is possible that these animals lived in groups, to deal with chicken.

"Scientists suspected long that their morphology plesiozaurilor not allowed to leave the ocean to lay their eggs on the ground," said Robin O'Keefe. "The lack of any indication of this was inexplicable, and this fossil embryo for the first time they allow elucidating the mystery," he said.

Plesiozaurs have no known living descendant, but were very common in the oceans in time when dinosaurs disappeared, 65 million ago years.

Amazing discover, revolutionary discovered 2011-08-16, dinozaurs, dinosaurs