Research of motions of extinct Plesiosauria

- Part 1 Gliding Performance -

Abstract

Plesiosauria is a group of oceanic reptiles which disappeared at the end of Cretaceous. Currently, only fossils argues their existence. The purpose of this paper is to disclose gliding performance of the extinct Plesiosauria. The authors applied fluid engineering approach to this goal. In other words, we described motion as motion equation, performed computational fluid dynamics calculation to obtain hydrodynamic coefficients, and conducted motion simulation to solve our problem. Two models with different neck length, the one with longer neck and the other with shorter neck, were prepared to compare their performance. In our motion simulation, two models showed maneuverability depending on length of neck. This result suggests that Plesiosauria with different neck length behaved accordingly to the length of their neck.