title: Manmadha Leelai (2022 film)

text: In a shocking turn of events, it is revealed that Sathya is actually a coldblooded serial killer. He killed Poorni in 2010 when he brought her to his farmhouse. Fearing that she would cheat on him someday and snitch about him to the police, he fooled Poorni using the same backdoor story, shot and killed her, and buried her in the farmhouse's garden. It is also revealed that, after killing Mohan, Sathya managed to loot the gold and money from Poorni's home without her knowledge and it was this money with which he had started his business in the first place. He also planted evidence against Madan after hacking into Poorni's online chats and made the police believe that Poorni had eloped with Madan so that Sathya cannot be brought into the picture at all.


title: Manmadha Leelai (2022 film)

text: Back in 2020, Sathya threatens Madan with the shotgun and orders him to bury Leela. Sathya then shoots and kills him and buries him along with Leela, telling himself that Leela was indeed a one-night stand.


title: Manmadha Leelai (2022 film)

text: The official announcement about this film was released as a first look poster on 17 January 2022 by Venkat Prabhu and team. The filming had already started back in 2021 with Ashok Selvan and simultaneously working with Silambarasan for "Maanaadu" film as well. This will be the 10th film for Venkat Prabhu and stated as "Venkat's Quickie" in his official tweet. Then the team officially released their first glimpse of this film on 10 February 2022.


title: Manmadha Leelai (2022 film)

text: The music is composed by Venkat Prabhu's brother Premgi Amaren. The first single "Va Kanakku" was released on 29 March 2022.


title: Manmadha Leelai (2022 film)

text: The Production Team RockFort Entertainment has confirmed the official release date for "Manmadha Leelai" on 1 April 2022 in their Twitter.


title: Manmadha Leelai (2022 film)

text: The film opened to positive reviews. M Suganth of "The Times of India" rated the film with 3/5 stars, stating that, "The director who pulled off an even more complex narrative with Maanaadu, chooses the road often travelled here. What was a tense adult comedy turns into an unimaginative crime movie with a convenient ending and a predictable twist. Even tonally, the film becomes something flashy and larger than life. And it is left to Ashok Selvan, who is terrific as a smooth-talking womaniser single-mindedly working towards getting his target, making his frustrations feel funny to us to carry this transformation. The actor tries, but with the writing letting him down, he barely manages to prevent this quickie from reaching it's climax on an unsatisfactory note." Siby Jeyya of "India Herald" wrote, "The director, who previously pulled off an even more intricate story with Maanaadu, opts for the well-worn path here. What started out as a suspenseful adult comedy quickly devolves into an unoriginal crime film with a facile conclusion and predictable surprise." "Behindwoods" gave a rating 2.75 out of 5 stars, stating that "the film is a fun adult thriller which is worth your time and money." Srivatsan S of "The Hindu" said, "The manner in which adultery is dealt with, to make it presentable and cool, raises concern about whether it was made for self-respecting adults or a gullible ‘youth’ crowd" Avinash Ramachandran of "Cinema Express" rated the film with 2.5/5 stars, called the film an intriguing dark comedy that falls short.


title: Plesiosaur

text: The Plesiosauria (; Greek: πλησίος, "plesios", meaning "near to" and "sauros", meaning "lizard") or plesiosaurs are an order or clade of extinct Mesozoic marine reptiles, belonging to the Sauropterygia.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Plesiosaurs first appeared in the latest Triassic Period, possibly in the Rhaetian stage, about 203 million years ago. They became especially common during the Jurassic Period, thriving until their disappearance due to the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous Period, about 66 million years ago. They had a worldwide oceanic distribution, and some species at least partly inhabited freshwater environments.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Plesiosaurs were among the first fossil reptiles discovered. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, scientists realised how distinctive their build was and they were named as a separate order in 1835. The first plesiosaurian genus, the eponymous "Plesiosaurus", was named in 1821. Since then, more than a hundred valid species have been described. In the early twenty-first century, the number of discoveries has increased, leading to an improved understanding of their anatomy, relationships and way of life.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Plesiosaurs had a broad flat body and a short tail. Their limbs had evolved into four long flippers, which were powered by strong muscles attached to wide bony plates formed by the shoulder girdle and the pelvis. The flippers made a flying movement through the water. Plesiosaurs breathed air, and bore live young; there are indications that they were warm-blooded.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Plesiosaurs showed two main morphological types. Some species, with the "plesiosauromorph" build, had (sometimes extremely) long necks and small heads; these were relatively slow and caught small sea animals. Other species, some of them reaching a length of up to seventeen metres, had the "pliosauromorph" build with a short neck and a large head; these were apex predators, fast hunters of large prey. The two types are related to the traditional strict division of the Plesiosauria into two suborders, the long-necked Plesiosauroidea and the short-neck Pliosauroidea. Modern research, however, indicates that several "long-necked" groups might have had some short-necked members or vice versa. Therefore, the purely descriptive terms "plesiosauromorph" and "pliosauromorph" have been introduced, which do not imply a direct relationship. "Plesiosauroidea" and "Pliosauroidea" today have a more limited meaning. The term "plesiosaur" is properly used to refer to the Plesiosauria as a whole, but informally it is sometimes meant to indicate only the long-necked forms, the old Plesiosauroidea.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Skeletal elements of plesiosaurs are among the first fossils of extinct reptiles recognised as such. In 1605, Richard Verstegen of Antwerp illustrated in his "A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence" plesiosaur vertebrae that he referred to fishes and saw as proof that Great Britain was once connected to the European continent. The Welshman Edward Lhuyd in his "Lithophylacii Brittannici Ichnographia" from 1699 also included depictions of plesiosaur vertebrae that again were considered fish vertebrae or "Ichthyospondyli". Other naturalists during the seventeenth century added plesiosaur remains to their collections, such as John Woodward; these were only much later understood to be of a plesiosaurian nature and are today partly preserved in the Sedgwick Museum.


title: Plesiosaur

text: In 1719, William Stukeley described a partial skeleton of a plesiosaur, which had been brought to his attention by the great-grandfather of Charles Darwin, Robert Darwin of Elston. The stone plate came from a quarry at Fulbeck in Lincolnshire and had been used, with the fossil at its underside, to reinforce the slope of a watering-hole in Elston in Nottinghamshire. After the strange bones it contained had been discovered, it was displayed in the local vicarage as the remains of a sinner drowned in the Great Flood. Stukely affirmed its "diluvial" nature but understood it represented some sea creature, perhaps a crocodile or dolphin. The specimen is today preserved in the Natural History Museum, its inventory number being BMNH R.1330. It is the earliest discovered more or less complete fossil reptile skeleton in a museum collection. It can perhaps be referred to "Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus".


title: Plesiosaur

text: During the eighteenth century, the number of English plesiosaur discoveries rapidly increased, although these were all of a more or less fragmentary nature. Important collectors were the reverends William Mounsey and Baptist Noel Turner, active in the Vale of Belvoir, whose collections were in 1795 described by John Nicholls in the first part of his "The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicestershire". One of Turner's partial plesiosaur skeletons is still preserved as specimen BMNH R.45 in the British Museum of Natural History; this is today referred to "Thalassiodracon".


title: Plesiosaur

text: In the early nineteenth century, plesiosaurs were still poorly known and their special build was not understood. No systematic distinction was made with ichthyosaurs, so the fossils of one group were sometimes combined with those of the other to obtain a more complete specimen. In 1821, a partial skeleton discovered in the collection of Colonel Thomas James Birch, was described by William Conybeare and Henry Thomas De la Beche, and recognised as representing a distinctive group. A new genus was named, "Plesiosaurus". The generic name was derived from the Greek πλήσιος, "plèsios", "closer to" and the Latinised "saurus", in the meaning of "saurian", to express that "Plesiosaurus" was in the Chain of Being more closely positioned to the Sauria, particularly the crocodile, than "Ichthyosaurus", which had the form of a more lowly fish. The name should thus be rather read as "approaching the Sauria" or "near reptile" than as "near lizard". Parts of the specimen are still present in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Soon afterwards, the morphology became much better known. In 1823, Thomas Clark reported an almost complete skull, probably belonging to "Thalassiodracon", which is now preserved by the British Geological Survey as specimen BGS GSM 26035. The same year, commercial fossil collector Mary Anning and her family uncovered an almost complete skeleton at Lyme Regis in Dorset, England, on what is today called the Jurassic Coast. It was acquired by the Duke of Buckingham, who made it available to the geologist William Buckland. He in turn let it be described by Conybeare on 24 February 1824 in a lecture to the Geological Society of London, during the same meeting in which for the first time a dinosaur was named, "Megalosaurus". The two finds revealed the unique and bizarre build of the animals, in 1832 by Professor Buckland likened to "a sea serpent run through a turtle". In 1824, Conybeare also provided a specific name to "Plesiosaurus": "dolichodeirus", meaning "longneck". In 1848, the skeleton was bought by the British Museum of Natural History and catalogued as specimen BMNH 22656. When the lecture was published, Conybeare also named a second species: "Plesiosaurus giganteus". This was a short-necked form later assigned to the Pliosauroidea.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Plesiosaurs became better known to the general public through two lavishly illustrated publications by the collector Thomas Hawkins: "Memoirs of Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri" of 1834 and "The Book of the Great Sea-Dragons" of 1840. Hawkins entertained a very idiosyncratic view of the animals, seeing them as monstrous creations of the devil, during a pre-Adamitic phase of history. Hawkins eventually sold his valuable and attractively restored specimens to the British Museum of Natural History.


title: Plesiosaur

text: During the first half of the nineteenth century, the number of plesiosaur finds steadily increased, especially through discoveries in the sea cliffs of Lyme Regis. Sir Richard Owen alone named nearly a hundred new species. The majority of their descriptions were, however, based on isolated bones, without sufficient diagnosis to be able to distinguish them from the other species that had previously been described. Many of the new species described at this time have subsequently been invalidated. The genus "Plesiosaurus" is particularly problematic, as the majority of the new species were placed in it so that it became a wastebasket taxon. Gradually, other genera were named. Hawkins had already created new genera, though these are no longer seen as valid. In 1841, Owen named "Pliosaurus brachydeirus". Its etymology referred to the earlier "Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus" as it is derived from πλεῖος, "pleios", "more fully", reflecting that according to Owen it was closer to the Sauria than "Plesiosaurus". Its specific name means "with a short neck". Later, the Pliosauridae were recognised as having a morphology fundamentally different from the plesiosaurids. The family Plesiosauridae had already been coined by John Edward Gray in 1825. In 1835, Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville named the order Plesiosauria itself.


title: Plesiosaur

text: In the second half of the nineteenth century, important finds were made outside of England. While this included some German discoveries, it mainly involved plesiosaurs found in the sediments of the American Cretaceous "Western Interior Seaway", the Niobrara Chalk. One fossil in particular marked the start of the Bone Wars between the rival paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh.


title: Plesiosaur

text: In 1867, physician Theophilus Turner near Fort Wallace in Kansas uncovered a plesiosaur skeleton, which he donated to Cope. Cope attempted to reconstruct the animal on the assumption that the longer extremity of the vertebral column was the tail, the shorter one the neck. He soon noticed that the skeleton taking shape under his hands had some very special qualities: the neck vertebrae had chevrons and with the tail vertebrae the joint surfaces were orientated back to front. Excited, Cope concluded to have discovered an entirely new group of reptiles: the Streptosauria or "Turned Saurians", which would be distinguished by reversed vertebrae and a lack of hindlimbs, the tail providing the main propulsion. After having published a description of this animal, followed by an illustration in a textbook about reptiles and amphibians, Cope invited Marsh and Joseph Leidy to admire his new "Elasmosaurus platyurus". Having listened to Cope's interpretation for a while, Marsh suggested that a simpler explanation of the strange build would be that Cope had reversed the vertebral column relative to the body as a whole. When Cope reacted indignantly to this suggestion, Leidy silently took the skull and placed it against the presumed last tail vertebra, to which it fitted perfectly: it was in fact the first neck vertebra, with still a piece of the rear skull attached to it. Mortified, Cope tried to destroy the entire edition of the textbook and, when this failed, immediately published an improved edition with a correct illustration but an identical date of publication. He excused his mistake by claiming that he had been misled by Leidy himself, who, describing a specimen of "Cimoliasaurus", had also reversed the vertebral column. Marsh later claimed that the affair was the cause of his rivalry with Cope: "he has since been my bitter enemy". Both Cope and Marsh in their rivalry named many plesiosaur genera and species, most of which are today considered invalid.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Around the turn of the century, most plesiosaur research was done by a former student of Marsh, Professor Samuel Wendell Williston. In 1914, Williston published his "Water reptiles of the past and present". Despite treating sea reptiles in general, it would for many years remain the most extensive general text on plesiosaurs. In 2013, a first modern textbook was being prepared by Olivier Rieppel. During the middle of the twentieth century, the USA remained an important centre of research, mainly through the discoveries of Samuel Paul Welles.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Whereas during the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century, new plesiosaurs were described at a rate of three or four novel genera each decade, the pace suddenly picked up in the 1990s, with seventeen plesiosaurs being discovered in this period. The tempo of discovery accelerated in the early twenty-first century, with about three or four plesiosaurs being named each year. This implies that about half of the known plesiosaurs are relatively new to science, a result of a far more intense field research. Some of this is taking place away from the traditional areas, e.g. in new sites developed in New Zealand, Argentina, Chile, Norway, Japan, China and Morocco, but the locations of the more original discoveries have proven to be still productive, with important new finds in England and Germany. Some of the new genera are a renaming of already known species, which were deemed sufficiently different to warrant a separate genus name.


title: Plesiosaur

text: In 2002, the "Monster of Aramberri" was announced to the press. Discovered in 1982 at the village of Aramberri, in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León, it was originally classified as a dinosaur. The specimen is actually a very large plesiosaur, possibly reaching in length. The media published exaggerated reports claiming it was long, and weighed up to , which would have made it among the largest predators of all time.


title: Plesiosaur

text: In 2004, what appeared to be a completely intact juvenile plesiosaur was discovered, by a local fisherman, at Bridgwater Bay National Nature Reserve in Somerset, UK. The fossil, dating from 180 million years ago as indicated by the ammonites associated with it, measured in length, and may be related to "Rhomaleosaurus". It is probably the best preserved specimen of a plesiosaur yet discovered.


title: Plesiosaur

text: In 2005, the remains of three plesiosaurs ("Dolichorhynchops herschelensis") discovered in the 1990s near Herschel, Saskatchewan were found to be a new species, by Dr. Tamaki Sato, a Japanese vertebrate paleontologist.


title: Plesiosaur

text: In 2006, a combined team of American and Argentinian investigators (the latter from the Argentinian Antarctic Institute and the La Plata Museum) found the skeleton of a juvenile plesiosaur measuring in length on Vega Island in Antarctica. The fossil is currently on display at the geological museum of South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.


title: Plesiosaur

text: In 2008, fossil remains of an undescribed plesiosaur that was named Predator X, now known as "Pliosaurus funkei", were unearthed in Svalbard. It had a length of , and its bite force of is one of the most powerful known.


title: Plesiosaur

text: In December 2017, a large skeleton of a plesiosaur was found in the continent of Antarctica, the oldest creature on the continent, and the first of its species in Antarctica.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Not only has the number of field discoveries increased, but also, since the 1950s, plesiosaurs have been the subject of more extensive theoretical work. The methodology of cladistics has, for the first time, allowed the exact calculation of their evolutionary relationships. Several hypotheses have been published about the way they hunted and swam, incorporating general modern insights about biomechanics and ecology. The many recent discoveries have tested these hypotheses and given rise to new ones.


title: Plesiosaur

text: The Plesiosauria have their origins within the Sauropterygia, a group of perhaps archelosaurian reptiles that returned to the sea. An advanced sauropterygian subgroup, the carnivorous Eusauropterygia with small heads and long necks, split into two branches during the Upper Triassic. One of these, the Nothosauroidea, kept functional elbow and knee joints; but the other, the Pistosauria, became more fully adapted to a sea-dwelling lifestyle. Their vertebral column became stiffer and the main propulsion while swimming no longer came from the tail but from the limbs, which changed into flippers. The Pistosauria became warm-blooded and viviparous, giving birth to live young. Early, basal, members of the group, traditionally called "pistosaurids", were still largely coastal animals. Their shoulder girdles remained weak, their pelves could not support the power of a strong swimming stroke, and their flippers were blunt. Later, a more advanced pistosaurian group split off: the Plesiosauria. These had reinforced shoulder girdles, flatter pelves, and more pointed flippers. Other adaptations allowing them to colonise the open seas included stiff limb joints; an increase in the number of phalanges of the hand and foot; a tighter lateral connection of the finger and toe phalanx series, and a shortened tail.


title: Plesiosaur

text: From the earliest Jurassic, the Hettangian stage, a rich radiation of plesiosaurs is known, implying that the group must already have diversified in the Late Triassic; of this diversification, however, only a few very basal forms have been discovered. The subsequent evolution of the plesiosaurs is very contentious. The various cladistic analyses have not resulted in a consensus about the relationships between the main plesiosaurian subgroups. Traditionally, plesiosaurs have been divided into the long-necked Plesiosauroidea and the short-necked Pliosauroidea. However, modern research suggests that some generally long-necked groups might have had short-necked members. To avoid confusion between the phylogeny, the evolutionary relationships, and the morphology, the way the animal is built, long-necked forms are therefore called "plesiosauromorph" and short-necked forms are called "pliosauromorph", without the "plesiosauromorph" species necessarily being more closely related to each other than to the "pliosauromorph" forms.


title: Plesiosaur

text: The latest common ancestor of the Plesiosauria was probably a rather small short-necked form. During the earliest Jurassic, the subgroup with the most species was the Rhomaleosauridae, a possibly very basal split-off of species which were also short-necked. Plesiosaurs in this period were at most five metres (sixteen feet) long. By the Toarcian, about 180 million years ago, other groups, among them the Plesiosauridae, became more numerous and some species developed longer necks, resulting in total body lengths of up to .


title: Plesiosaur

text: In the middle of the Jurassic, very large Pliosauridae evolved. These were characterized by a large head and a short neck, such as "Liopleurodon" and "Simolestes". These forms had skulls up to three metres (ten feet) long and reached a length of up to and a weight of ten tonnes. The pliosaurids had large, conical teeth and were the dominant marine carnivores of their time. During the same time, approximately 160 million years ago, the Cryptoclididae were present, shorter species with a long neck and a small head.


title: Plesiosaur

text: The Leptocleididae radiated during the Early Cretaceous. These were rather small forms that, despite their short necks, might have been more closely related to the Plesiosauridae than to the Pliosauridae. Later in the Early Cretaceous, the Elasmosauridae appeared; these were among the longest plesiosaurs, reaching up to fifteen metres (fifty feet) in length due to very long necks containing as many as 76 vertebrae, more than any other known vertebrate. Pliosauridae were still present as is shown by large predators, such as "Kronosaurus".


title: Plesiosaur

text: At the beginning of the Late Cretaceous, the Ichthyosauria became extinct; perhaps a plesiosaur group evolved to fill their niches: the Polycotylidae, which had short necks and peculiarly elongated heads with narrow snouts. During the Late Cretaceous, the elasmosaurids still had many species.


title: Plesiosaur

text: All plesiosaurs became extinct as a result of the K-T event at the end of the Cretaceous period, approximately million years ago.


title: Plesiosaur

text: In modern phylogeny, clades are defined groups that contain all species belonging to a certain branch of the evolutionary tree. One way to define a clade is to let it consist of the last common ancestor of two such species and all its descendants. Such a clade is called a "node clade". In 2008, Patrick Druckenmiller and Anthony Russell in this way defined Plesiosauria as the group consisting of the last common ancestor of "Plesiosaurus dolichocheirus" and "Peloneustes philarchus" and all its descendants. "Plesiosaurus" and "Peloneustes" represented the main subgroups of the Plesiosauroidea and the Pliosauroidea and were chosen for historical reasons; any other species from these groups would have sufficed.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Another way to define a clade is to let it consist of all species more closely related to a certain species that one in any case wishes to include in the clade than to another species that one to the contrary desires to exclude. Such a clade is called a "stem clade". Such a definition has the advantage that it is easier to include all species with a certain morphology. Plesiosauria was in 2010 by Hillary Ketchum and Roger Benson defined as such a stem-based taxon: "all taxa more closely related to "Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus" and "Pliosaurus brachydeirus" than to "Augustasaurus hagdorni"". Ketchum and Benson (2010) also coined a new clade Neoplesiosauria, a node-based taxon that was defined by as ""Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus", "Pliosaurus brachydeirus", their most recent common ancestor and all of its descendants". The clade Neoplesiosauria very likely is materially identical to Plesiosauria "sensu" Druckenmiller & Russell, thus would designate exactly the same species, and the term was meant to be a replacement of this concept.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Benson "et al." (2012) found the traditional Pliosauroidea to be paraphyletic in relation to Plesiosauroidea. Rhomaleosauridae was found to be outside Neoplesiosauria, but still within Plesiosauria. The early Carnian pistosaur "Bobosaurus" was found to be one step more advanced than "Augustasaurus" in relation to the Plesiosauria and therefore it represented by definition the basalmost known plesiosaur. This analysis focused on basal plesiosaurs and therefore only one derived pliosaurid and one cryptoclidian were included, while elasmosaurids were not included at all. A more detailed analysis published by both Benson and Druckenmiller in 2014 was not able to resolve the relationships among the lineages at the base of Plesiosauria.


title: Plesiosaur

text: In general, plesiosaurians varied in adult length from between to about . The group thus contained some of the largest marine apex predators in the fossil record, roughly equalling the longest ichthyosaurs, mosasaurids, sharks and toothed whales in size. Some plesiosaurian remains, such as a long set of highly reconstructed and fragmentary lower jaws preserved in the Oxford University Museum and referable to "Pliosaurus rossicus" (previously referred to "Stretosaurus" and "Liopleurodon"), indicated a length of . However, it was recently argued that its size cannot be currently determined due to their being poorly reconstructed and a length of metres is more likely. MCZ 1285, a specimen currently referable to "Kronosaurus queenslandicus", from the Early Cretaceous of Australia, was estimated to have a skull length of .


title: Plesiosaur

text: The typical plesiosaur had a broad, flat, body and a short tail. Plesiosaurs retained their ancestral two pairs of limbs, which had evolved into large flippers. Plesiosaurs were related to the earlier Nothosauridae, that had a more crocodile-like body. The flipper arrangement is unusual for aquatic animals in that probably all four limbs were used to propel the animal through the water by up-and-down movements. The tail was most likely only used for helping in directional control. This contrasts to the ichthyosaurs and the later mosasaurs, in which the tail provided the main propulsion.


title: Plesiosaur

text: To power the flippers, the shoulder girdle and the pelvis had been greatly modified, developing into broad bone plates at the underside of the body, which served as an attachment surface for large muscle groups, able to pull the limbs downwards. In the shoulder, the coracoid had become the largest element covering the major part of the breast. The scapula was much smaller, forming the outer front edge of the trunk. To the middle, it continued into a clavicle and finally a small interclavicular bone. As with most tetrapods, the shoulder joint was formed by the scapula and coracoid. In the pelvis, the bone plate was formed by the ischium at the rear and the larger pubic bone in front of it. The ilium, which in land vertebrates bears the weight of the hindlimb, had become a small element at the rear, no longer attached to either the pubic bone or the thighbone. The hip joint was formed by the ischium and the pubic bone. The pectoral and pelvic plates were connected by a plastron, a bone cage formed by the paired belly ribs that each had a middle and an outer section. This arrangement immobilised the entire trunk.


title: Plesiosaur

text: To become flippers, the limbs had changed considerably. The limbs were very large, each about as long as the trunk. The forelimbs and hindlimbs strongly resembled each other. The humerus in the upper arm, and the femur in the upper leg, had become large flat bones, expanded at their outer ends. The elbow joints and the knee joints were no longer functional: the lower arm and the lower leg could not flex in relation to the upper limb elements, but formed a flat continuation of them. All outer bones had become flat supporting elements of the flippers, tightly connected to each other and hardly able to rotate, flex, extend or spread. This was true of the ulna, radius, metacarpals and fingers, as well of the tibia, fibula, metatarsals and toes. Furthermore, in order to elongate the flippers, the number of phalanges had increased, up to eighteen in a row, a phenomenon called hyperphalangy. The flippers were not perfectly flat, but had a lightly convexly curved top profile, like an airfoil, to be able to "fly" through the water.


title: Plesiosaur

text: While plesiosaurs varied little in the build of the trunk, and can be called "conservative" in this respect, there were major differences between the subgroups as regards the form of the neck and the skull. Plesiosaurs can be divided into two major morphological types that differ in head and neck size. "Plesiosauromorphs", such as Cryptoclididae, Elasmosauridae, and Plesiosauridae, had long necks and small heads. "Pliosauromorphs", such as the Pliosauridae and the Rhomaleosauridae, had shorter necks with a large, elongated head. The neck length variations were not caused by an elongation of the individual cervical vertebrae, but an increase in their number. "Elasmosaurus" has seventy-two neck vertebrae; the known record is held by the elasmosaurid "Albertonectes", with seventy-six cervicals. The large number of joints suggested to early researchers that the neck must have been very flexible; indeed, a swan-like curvature of the neck was assumed to be possible - in Icelandic, plesiosaurs are even called "Svaneðlur", "swan lizards". However, modern research has confirmed an earlier conjecture of Williston that the long plate-like spines on top of the vertebrae, the "processus spinosi", strongly limited vertical neck movement. Although horizontal curving was less restricted, in general, the neck must have been rather stiff and certainly was incapable of being bent into serpentine coils. This is even more true of the short-necked "pliosauromophs", which had as few as eleven cervical vertebrae. With early forms, the amphicoelous or amphiplat neck vertebrae bore double-headed neck ribs; later forms had single-headed ribs. In the remainder of the vertebral column, the number of dorsal vertebrae varied between about nineteen and thirty-two; of the sacral vertebrae, between two and six, and of the tail vertebrae, between about twenty-one and thirty-two. These vertebrae still possessed the original processes inherited from the land-dwelling ancestors of the Sauropterygia and had not been reduced to fish-like simple discs, as happened with the vertebrae of ichthyosaurs. The tail vertebrae possessed chevron bones. The dorsal vertebrae of plesiosaurs are easily recognisable by two large "foramina subcentralia", paired vascular openings at the underside.


title: Plesiosaur

text: The skull of plesiosaurs showed the "euryapsid" condition, lacking the lower temporal fenestrae, the openings at the lower rear sides. The upper temporal fenestrae formed large openings at the sides of the rear skull roof, the attachment for muscles closing the lower jaws. Generally, the parietal bones were very large, with a midline crest, while the squamosal bones typically formed an arch, excluding the parietals from the occiput. The eye sockets were large, in general pointing obliquely upwards; the pliosaurids had more sideways directed eyes. The eyes were supported by scleral rings, the form of which shows that they were relatively flat, an adaptation to diving. The anteriorly placed internal nostrils, the "choanae", have palatal grooves to channel water, the flow of which would be maintained by hydrodynamic pressure over the posteriorly placed, in front of the eye sockets, external nares during swimming. According to one hypothesis, during its passage through the nasal ducts, the water would have been 'smelled' by olfactory epithelia. However, more to the rear, a second pair of openings is present in the palate; a later hypothesis holds that these are the real "choanae" and the front pair in reality represented paired salt glands. The distance between the eye sockets and the nostrils was so limited because the nasal bones were strongly reduced, even absent in many species. The premaxillae directly touched the frontal bones; in the elasmosaurids, they even reached back to the parietal bones. Often, the lacrimal bones were also lacking.


title: Plesiosaur

text: The tooth form and number was very variable. Some forms had hundreds of needle-like teeth. Most species had larger conical teeth with a round or oval cross-section. Such teeth numbered four to six in the premaxilla and about fourteen to twenty-five in the maxilla; the number in the lower jaws roughly equalled that of the skull. The teeth were placed in tooth-sockets, had vertically wrinkled enamel and lacked a true cutting edge or "carina". With some species, the front teeth were notably longer, to grab prey.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Soft tissue remains of plesiosaurs are rare, but sometimes, especially in shale deposits, they have been partly preserved, e.g. showing the outlines of the body. An early discovery in this respect was the holotype of "Plesiosaurus conybeari" (presently "Attenborosaurus"). From such finds it is known that the skin was smooth, without apparent scales but with small wrinkles, that the trailing edge of the flippers extended considerably behind the limb bones; and that the tail bore a vertical fin, as reported by Wilhelm Dames in his description of "Plesiosaurus guilelmiimperatoris" (presently "Seeleyosaurus"). The possibility of a tail fluke has been confirmed by recent studies on the caudal neural spine form of "Pantosaurus", "Cryptoclidus" and "Rhomaleosaurus zetlandicus". A 2020 study claims that the caudal fin was horizontal in configuration.


title: Plesiosaur

text: The probable food source of plesiosaurs varied depending on whether they belonged to the long-necked "plesiosauromorph" forms or the short-necked "pliosauromorph" species.


title: Plesiosaur

text: The extremely long necks of "plesiosauromorphs" have caused speculation as to their function from the very moment their special build became apparent. Conybeare had offered three possible explanations. The neck could have served to intercept fast-moving fish in a pursuit. Alternatively, plesiosaurs could have rested on the sea bottom, while the head was sent out to search for prey, which seemed to be confirmed by the fact the eyes were directed relatively upwards. Finally, Conybeare suggested the possibility that plesiosaurs swam on the surface, letting their necks plunge downwards to seek food at lower levels. All these interpretations assumed that the neck was very flexible. The modern insight that the neck was, in fact, rather rigid, with limited vertical movement, has necessitated new explanations. One hypothesis is that the length of the neck made it possible to surprise schools of fish, the head arriving before the sight or pressure wave of the trunk could alert them. "Plesiosauromorphs" hunted visually, as shown by their large eyes, and perhaps employed a directional sense of olfaction. Hard and soft-bodied cephalopods probably formed part of their diet. Their jaws were probably strong enough to bite through the hard shells of this prey type. Fossil specimens have been found with cephalopod shells still in their stomach. The bony fish (Osteichthyes), which further diversified during the Jurassic, were likely prey as well. A very different hypothesis claims that "plesiosauromorphs" were bottom feeders. The stiff necks would have been used to plough the sea bottom, eating the benthos. This would have been proven by long furrows present in ancients seabeds. Such a lifestyle has in 2017 been suggested for "Morturneria". "Plesiosauromorphs" were not well adapted to catching large fast-moving prey, as their long necks, though seemingly streamlined, caused enormous skin friction. Sankar Chatterjee suggested in 1989 that some Cryptocleididae were suspension feeders, filtering plankton. "Aristonectes" e.g. had hundreds of teeth, allowing it to sieve small Crustacea from the water.


title: Plesiosaur

text: The short-necked "pliosauromorphs" were top carnivores, or apex predators, in their respective foodwebs. They were pursuit predators or ambush predators of various sized prey and opportunistic feeders; their teeth could be used to pierce soft-bodied prey, especially fish. Their heads and teeth were very large, suited to grab and rip apart large animals. Their morphology allowed for a high swimming speed. They too hunted visually.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Plesiosaurs were themselves prey for other carnivores, as shown by bite marks left by a shark that have been discovered on a fossilized plesiosaur fin and the fossilized remains of a mosasaur's stomach contents that are thought to be the remains of a plesiosaur.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Skeletons have also been discovered with gastroliths, stones, in their stomachs, though whether to help break down food, especially cephalopods, in a muscular gizzard, or to vary buoyancy, or both, has not been established. However, the total weight of the gastroliths found in various specimens appears to be insufficient to modify the buoyancy of these large reptiles. The first plesiosaur gastroliths, found with "Mauisaurus gardneri", were reported by Harry Govier Seeley in 1877. The number of these stones per individual is often very large. In 1949, a fossil of "Alzadasaurus" (specimen SDSM 451, later renamed to "Styxosaurus") showed 253 of them. The size of individual stones is often considerable. In 1991 an elasmosaurid specimen, KUVP 129744, was investigated, containing a gastrolith with a diameter of seventeen centimetres and a weight of 1300 grams; and a somewhat shorter stone of 1490 grams. In total, forty-seven gastroliths were present, with a combined weight of 13 kilograms. The size of the stones has been seen as an indication that they were not swallowed by accident, but deliberately, the animal perhaps covering large distances in search of a suitable rock type.


title: Plesiosaur

text: The distinctive four-flippered body-shape has caused considerable speculation about what kind of stroke plesiosaurs used. The only modern group with four flippers are the sea turtles, which only use the front pair for propulsion. Conybeare and Buckland had already compared the flippers with bird wings. However, such a comparison was not very informative, as the mechanics of bird flight in this period were poorly understood. By the middle of the nineteenth century, it was typically assumed that plesiosaurs employed a rowing movement. The flippers would have been moved forward in a horizontal position, to minimise friction, and then axially rotated to a vertical position in order to be pulled to the rear, causing the largest possible reactive force. In fact, such a method would be very inefficient: the recovery stroke in this case generates no thrust and the rear stroke generates an enormous turbulence. In the early twentieth century, the newly discovered principles of bird flight suggested to several researchers that plesiosaurs, like turtles and penguins, made a flying movement while swimming. This was e.g. proposed by Eberhard Fraas in 1905, and in 1908 by Othenio Abel. When flying, the flipper movement is more vertical, its point describing an oval or "8". Ideally, the flipper is first moved obliquely to the front and downwards and then, after a slight retraction and rotation, crosses this path from below to be pulled to the front and upwards. During both strokes, down and up, according to Bernoulli's principle, forward and upward thrust is generated by the convexly curved upper profile of the flipper, the front edge slightly inclined relative to the water flow, while turbulence is minimal. However, despite the evident advantages of such a swimming method, in 1924 the first systematic study on the musculature of plesiosaurs by David Meredith Seares Watson concluded they nevertheless performed a rowing movement.


title: Plesiosaur

text: During the middle of the twentieth century, Watson's "rowing model" remained the dominant hypothesis regarding the plesiosaur swimming stroke. In 1957, Lambert Beverly Halstead, at the time using the family name Tarlo, proposed a variant: the hindlimbs would have rowed in the horizontal plane but the forelimbs would have paddled, moved to below and to the rear. In 1975, the traditional model was challenged by Jane Ann Robinson, who revived the "flying" hypothesis. She argued that the main muscle groups were optimally placed for a vertical flipper movement, not for pulling the limbs horizontally, and that the form of the shoulder and hip joints would have precluded the vertical rotation needed for rowing. In a subsequent article, Robinson proposed that the kinetic energy generated by the forces exerted on the trunk by the strokes, would have been stored and released as elastic energy in the ribcage, allowing for an especially efficient and dynamic propulsion system.


title: Plesiosaur

text: In Robinson's model, both the downstroke and the upstroke would have been powerful. In 1982, she was criticised by Samuel Tarsitano, Eberhard Frey and Jürgen Riess, who claimed that, while the muscles at the underside of the shoulder and pelvic plates were clearly powerful enough to pull the limbs downwards, comparable muscle groups on the top of these plates to elevate the limbs were simply lacking, and, had they been present, could not have been forcefully employed, their bulging carrying the danger of hurting the internal organs. They proposed a more limited flying model in which a powerful downstroke was combined with a largely unpowered recovery, the flipper returning to its original position by the momentum of the forward moving and temporarily sinking body. This modified flying model became a popular interpretation. Less attention was given to an alternative hypothesis by Stephen Godfrey in 1984, which proposed that both the forelimbs and hindlimbs performed a deep paddling motion to the rear combined with a powered recovery stroke to the front, resembling the movement made by the forelimbs of sea-lions.


title: Plesiosaur

text: In 2010, Frank Sanders and Kenneth Carpenter published a study concluding that Robinson's model had been correct. Frey & Riess would have been mistaken in their assertion that the shoulder and pelvic plates had no muscles attached to their upper sides. While these muscle groups were probably not very powerful, this could easily have been compensated by the large muscles on the back, especially the "latissimus dorsi", which would have been well developed in view of the high spines on the backbone. Furthermore, the flat build of the shoulder and hip joints strongly indicated that the main movement was vertical, not horizontal.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Like all tetrapods with limbs, plesiosaurs must have had a certain gait, a coordinated movement pattern of the, in this case, flippers. Of all the possibilities, in practice attention has been largely directed to the question of whether the front pair and hind pair moved simultaneously, so that all four flippers were engaged at the same moment, or in an alternate pattern, each pair being employed in turn. Frey & Riess in 1991 proposed an alternate model, which would have had the advantage of a more continuous propulsion. In 2000, Theagarten Lingham-Soliar evaded the question by concluding that, like sea turtles, plesiosaurs only used the front pair for a powered stroke. The hind pair would have been merely used for steering. Lingham-Soliar deduced this from the form of the hip joint, which would have allowed for only a limited vertical movement. Furthermore, a separation of the propulsion and steering function would have facilitated the general coordination of the body and prevented a too extreme pitch. He rejected Robinson's hypothesis that elastic energy was stored in the ribcage, considering the ribs too stiff for this.


title: Plesiosaur

text: The interpretation by Frey & Riess became the dominant one, but was challenged in 2004 by Sanders, who showed experimentally that, whereas an alternate movement might have caused excessive pitching, a simultaneous movement would have caused only a slight pitch, which could have been easily controlled by the hind flippers. Of the other axial movements, rolling could have been controlled by alternately engaging the flippers of the right or left side, and yaw by the long neck or a vertical tail fin. Sanders did not believe that the hind pair was not used for propulsion, concluding that the limitations imposed by the hip joint were very relative. In 2010, Sanders & Carpenter concluded that, with an alternating gait, the turbulence caused by the front pair would have hindered an effective action of the hind pair. Besides, a long gliding phase after a simultaneous engagement would have been very energy efficient. It is also possible that the gait was optional and was adapted to the circumstances. During a fast steady pursuit, an alternate movement would have been useful; in an ambush, a simultaneous stroke would have made a peak speed possible. When searching for prey over a longer distance, a combination of a simultaneous movement with gliding would have cost the least energy. In 2017, a study by Luke Muscutt, using a robot model, concluded that the rear flippers were actively employed, allowing for a 60% increase of the propulsive force and a 40% increase of efficiency. The stroke would have been at its most powerful using a slightly alternating gait, the rear flippers engaging just after the front flippers, to benefit from their wake. However, there would not have been a single optimal phase for all conditions, the gait likely having been changed as the situation demanded.


title: Plesiosaur

text: In general, it is hard to determine the maximum speed of extinct sea creatures. For plesiosaurs, this is made more difficult by the lack of consensus about their flipper stroke and gait. There are no exact calculations of their Reynolds Number. Fossil impressions show that the skin was relatively smooth, not scaled, and this may have reduced form drag. Small wrinkles are present in the skin that may have prevented separation of the laminar flow in the boundary layer and thereby reduced skin friction.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Sustained speed may be estimated by calculating the drag of a simplified model of the body, that can be approached by a prolate spheroid, and the sustainable level of energy output by the muscles. A first study of this problem was published by Judy Massare in 1988. Even when assuming a low hydrodynamic efficiency of 0.65, Massare's model seemed to indicate that plesiosaurs, if warm-blooded, would have cruised at a speed of four metres per second, or about fourteen kilometres per hour, considerably exceeding the known speeds of extant dolphins and whales. However, in 2002 Ryosuke Motani showed that the formulae that Massare had used, had been flawed. A recalculation, using corrected formulae, resulted in a speed of half a metre per second (1.8 km/h) for a cold-blooded plesiosaur and one and a half metres per second (5.4 km/h) for an endothermic plesiosaur. Even the highest estimate is about a third lower than the speed of extant Cetacea.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Massare also tried to compare the speeds of plesiosaurs with those of the two other main sea reptile groups, the Ichthyosauria and the Mosasauridae. She concluded that plesiosaurs were about twenty percent slower than advanced ichthyosaurs, which employed a very effective tunniform movement, oscillating just the tail, but five percent faster than mosasaurids, which were assumed to swim with an inefficient anguilliform, eel-like, movement of the body.


title: Plesiosaur

text: The many plesiosaur species may have differed considerably in their swimming speeds, reflecting the various body shapes present in the group. While the short-necked "pliosauromorphs" (e.g. "Liopleurodon") may have been fast swimmers, the long-necked "plesiosauromorphs" were built more for manoeuvrability than for speed, slowed by a strong skin friction, yet capable of a fast rolling movement. Some long-necked forms, such as the Elasmosauridae, also have relatively short stubby flippers with a low aspect ratio, further reducing speed but improving roll.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Few data are available that show exactly how deep plesiosaurs dived. That they dived to some considerable depth is proven by traces of decompression sickness. The heads of the "humeri" and "femora" with many fossils show necrosis of the bone tissue, caused by a too rapid ascent after deep diving. However, this does not allow to deduce some exact depth as the damage could have been caused by a few very deep dives, or alternatively by a great number of relatively shallow descents. The vertebrae show no such damage: they were probably protected by a superior blood supply, made possible by the arteries entering the bone through the two "foramina subcentralia", large openings in their undersides.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Descending would have been helped by a negative Archimedes Force, i.e. being denser than water. Of course, this would have had the disadvantage of hampering coming up again. Young plesiosaurs show pachyostosis, an extreme density of the bone tissue, which might have increased relative weight. Adult individuals have more spongy bone. Gastroliths have been suggested as a method to increase weight or even as means to attain neutral buoyancy, swallowing or spitting them out again as needed. They might also have been used to increase stability.


title: Plesiosaur

text: The relatively large eyes of the Cryptocleididae have been seen as an adaptation to deep diving.<ref name="berezin2019"/


title: Plesiosaur

text: A 2020 study has posited that sauropterygians relied on vertical tail strokes much like cetaceans. In plesiosaurs the trunk was rigid so this action was more limited and in conjunction with the flippers.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Traditionally, it was assumed that extinct reptile groups were cold-blooded like modern reptiles. New research during the past decades has led to the conclusion that some groups, such as theropod dinosaurs and pterosaurs, were very likely warm-blooded. Whether perhaps plesiosaurs were warm-blooded as well is difficult to determine. One of the indications of a high metabolism is the presence of fast-growing fibrolamellar bone. The pachyostosis with juvenile individuals makes it hard to establish whether plesiosaurs possessed such bone, though. However, it has been possible to check its occurrence with more basal members of the more inclusive group that plesiosaurs belonged to, the Sauropterygia. A study in 2010 concluded that fibrolamellar bone was originally present with sauropterygians. A subsequent publication in 2013 found that the Nothosauridae lacked this bone matrix type but that basal Pistosauria possessed it, a sign of a more elevated metabolism. It is thus more parsimonious to assume that the more derived pistosaurians, the plesiosaurs, also had a faster metabolism. A paper published in 2018 claimed that plesiosaurs had resting metabolic rates (RMR) in the range of birds based on quantitative osteohistological modelling. However, these results are problematic in view of general principles of vertebrate physiology (see Kleiber's law); evidence from isotope studies of plesiosaur tooth enamel indeed suggests endothermy at lower RMRs, with inferred body temperatures of ca. 26 °C.


title: Plesiosaur

text: As reptiles in general are oviparous, until the end of the twentieth century it had been seen as possible that smaller plesiosaurs may have crawled up on a beach to lay eggs, like modern turtles. Their strong limbs and a flat underside seemed to have made this feasible. This method was, for example, defended by Halstead. However, as those limbs no longer had functional elbow or knee joints and the underside by its very flatness would have generated a lot of friction, already in the nineteenth century it was hypothesised that plesiosaurs had been viviparous. Besides, it was hard to conceive how the largest species, as big as whales, could have survived a beaching. Fossil finds of ichthyosaur embryos showed that at least one group of marine reptiles had borne live young. The first to claim that similar embryos had been found in plesiosaurs was Harry Govier Seeley, who reported in 1887 having acquired a nodule with four to eight tiny skeletons. In 1896, he described this discovery in more detail. If authentic, the embryos of plesiosaurs would have been very small, like those of ichthyosaurs. However, in 1982 Richard Anthony Thulborn showed that Seeley had been deceived by a "doctored" fossil of a nest of crayfish.


title: Plesiosaur

text: An actual plesiosaur specimen found in 1987 eventually proved that plesiosaurs gave birth to live young: This fossil of a pregnant "Polycotylus latippinus" shows that these animals gave birth to a single large juvenile and probably invested parental care in their offspring, similar to modern whales. The young was 1.5 metres (five feet) long and thus large compared to its mother of five metres (sixteen feet) length, indicating a K-strategy in reproduction. Little is known about growth rates or a possible sexual dimorphism.


title: Plesiosaur

text: From the parental care indicated by the large size of the young, it can be deduced that social behaviour in general was relatively complex. It is not known whether plesiosaurs hunted in packs. Their relative brain size seems to be typical for reptiles. Of the senses, sight and smell were important, hearing less so; elasmosaurids have lost the stapes completely. It has been suggested that with some groups the skull housed electro-sensitive organs.


title: Plesiosaur

text: Some plesiosaur fossils show pathologies, the result of illness or old age. In 2012, a mandible of "Pliosaurus" was described with a jaw joint clearly afflicted by arthritis, a typical sign of senescence.


title: Plesiosaur

text: The belief that plesiosaurs are dinosaurs is a common misconception, and plesiosaurs are often erroneously depicted as dinosaurs in popular culture.


title: Plesiosaur

text: It has been suggested that legends of sea serpents and modern sightings of supposed monsters in lakes or the sea could be explained by the survival of plesiosaurs into modern times. This cryptozoological proposal has been rejected by the scientific community at large, which considers it to be based on fantasy and pseudoscience. Purported plesiosaur carcasses have been shown to be partially decomposed corpses of basking sharks instead.


title: Plesiosaur

text: While the Loch Ness monster is often reported as looking like a plesiosaur, it is also often described as looking completely different. A number of reasons have been presented for it to be unlikely to be a plesiosaur. They include the assumption that the water in the loch is too cold for a presumed cold-blooded reptile to be able to survive easily, the assumption that air-breathing animals would be easy to see whenever they appear at the surface to breathe, the fact that the loch is too small and contains insufficient food to be able to support a breeding colony of large animals, and finally the fact that the lake was formed only 10,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age, and the latest fossil appearance of plesiosaurs dates to over 66 million years ago. Frequent explanations for the sightings include waves, floating inanimate objects, tricks of the light, swimming known animals and practical jokes. Nevertheless, in the popular imagination, plesiosaurs have come to be identified with the Monster of Loch Ness. That has had the advantage of making the group better known to the general public, but the disadvantage that people have trouble taking the subject seriously, forcing paleontologists to explain time and time again that plesiosaurs really existed and are not merely creatures of myth or fantasy.


title: Fediverse

text: The fediverse (a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe") is an ensemble of federated (i.e. interconnected) servers that are used for web publishing (i.e. social networking, microblogging, blogging, or websites) and file hosting, but which, while independently hosted, can communicate with each other.


title: Fediverse

text: On different servers (technically instances), users can create so-called identities. These identities are able to communicate over the boundaries of the instances because the software running on the servers supports one or more communication protocols that follow an open standard. As an identity on the fediverse, users are able to post text and other media, or to follow posts by other identities. In some cases, users can show or share data (video, audio, text, and other files) publicly or to a selected group of identities, and allow other identities to edit other users' data (such as a calendar or an address book).


title: Fediverse

text: In 2008, the social network identi.ca was founded by Evan Prodromou. He published the software GNU social under a free license (GNU Affero General Public License, AGPL). It defined the OStatus protocol. Besides the server, identi.ca, there were only few other instances, run by persons for their own use. This changed in 2011–12 when identi.ca switched to another software called pump.io. Several new GNU social instances were created. At the same time as GNU social, other projects like Friendica, Hubzilla, Mastodon, and Pleroma integrated the OStatus protocol, thus extending the fediverse (though Mastodon and Pleroma have since dropped OStatus in favor of ActivityPub). In the meantime, other communication protocols evolved which were integrated to different degrees into the software packages.


title: Fediverse

text: In January 2018, the W3C presented the ActivityPub protocol, aiming to improve the interoperability between the different software packages run on a wide network of servers. , this protocol was supported by thirteen software packages (see table below), and was the dominant protocol used in the Fediverse.


title: Fediverse

text: The software packages used in the fediverse are FOSS. Some of them vaguely resemble Twitter in style (for example, Mastodon, Misskey, GNU social, and Pleroma, which are similar in their microblogging function), while others include more communication and transaction options that are instead comparable to Google+ or Facebook (such as is the case with Friendica and Hubzilla).


title: Fediverse

text: A number of developers publish live statistics about the fediverse on monitoring sites like the-federation.info. The statistics on these sites are an indication of usage levels, not a complete record, as they can only aggregate data from instances that use the NodeInfo protocol to publish usage statistics. There is no guarantee that all instances are known to these sites, and some instances may disable NodeInfo, or use software that hasn't implemented it. Some of these sites include data from any federated software that publishes it using NodeInfo, not just fediverse software.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The Oldsmobile Toronado is a personal luxury car manufactured and marketed by the Oldsmobile division of General Motors from 1966 to 1992 over four generations. The Toronado was noted for its transaxle version of GM's Turbo-Hydramatic transmission, making it the first U.S.-produced front-wheel drive automobile since the demise of the Cord 810/812 in 1937.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: Sharing the GM E platform introduced by the rear-wheel drive Buick Riviera in 1963 and adopted for the front-wheel drive 1967 Cadillac Eldorado, the three models shared the E platform for most of the Toronado's 26-year history.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The Toronado began as a design painting by Oldsmobile stylist David North in 1962. His "Flame Red Car" was a compact sports/personal car never intended for production. A few weeks after the design was finished, however, Oldsmobile division was informed it would be permitted to build a personal car in the Riviera/Thunderbird class for the 1966 model year, and North's design was selected. For production economy, the still-unnamed car was to share the so-called E-body shell with the redesigned 1966 Buick Riviera (then entering its second generation), which was substantially larger than North had envisioned. Despite the efforts of Oldsmobile and General Motors styling chief Bill Mitchell to put the car on the smaller A-body intermediate used by the Oldsmobile Cutlass, they were overruled for cost reasons.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: Oldsmobile had been working on front-wheel drive since 1958, a project shepherded by engineer John Beltz (who originated the 4-4-2 and would later become head of the division). Although initially envisioned for the smaller F-85 line, its cost and experimental nature pushed the program towards a larger, more expensive car. Engineer F. J. Hooven of the Ford Motor Company, had patented a similar FWD layout, and Ford considered the design for the 1961 Ford Thunderbird. However, the capability to develop and engineer it on such short notice was doubtful. In 1956 Oldsmobile had also introduced a personal 2-door concept car called the Oldsmobile Golden Rocket that didn't progress into production.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The unusual Toronado powertrain developed by Oldsmobile, called the Unitized Power Package (UPP), packaged a Rocket V8 and transmission into an engine bay no larger than one for a conventional rear-wheel drive car. During its seven-year development, UPP components were driven over 1.5 million test miles to verify their strength and reliability. They proved so well-built the UPP was employed basically unchanged in the 1970s GMC motorhome.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: Firestone designed an 8.85" x 15" tire especially for the Toronado called the TFD (Toronado-Front-Drive) tire. It had a stiffer sidewall than normal, and the tread and stylishly thin white pin-stripe were also unique.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: Oldsmobile engineers selected a conventional, though performance-boosted, Olds Super Rocket V8 rated at and of torque. It was an increase of over the Starfire 425, and an increase of over the standard 425 engine in the Ninety-Eight. The Toronado intake manifold's unique shape was depressed to allow for engine hood clearance.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The Turbo-Hydramatic heavy-duty three-speed automatic transmission became available during development of the Toronado. Called the TH425 in FWD form, the transmission's torque converter was separated from its planetary gearset, with the torque converter driving the gearset through a wide silent chain-drive called Hy-Vo, riding on two sprockets. The Hy-Vo chain drive was developed by GM's Hydra-Matic Division and Morse Chain Division of Borg-Warner. The chains were made from very strong hardened steel and required no tensioners or idler pulleys because they were pre-stretched on a special machine at the factory. Although the rotational direction of the transmission gears had to be reversed, a large number of components were shared with the conventional TH400. Use of the automatic also eliminated the need to devise a workable manual-shift linkage. No manual transmission was ever contemplated because performance was adequate with the automatic transmission and because virtually all U.S.-built luxury cars during this period came with automatic transmissions as standard equipment. The car's time was clocked at 9.5 seconds.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The Toronado used a subframe that ended at the forward end of the rear suspension leaf springs, serving as an attachment point for the springs. It carried the powertrain, front suspension and floorpan, allowing greater isolation of road and engine harshness.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: To fit into the tight space, Oldsmobile adopted torsion bars for the Toronado's front suspension (the first GM passenger car application of torsion bars in the US, but still not up to Packard's automatic ride leveling system), with conventional, unequal-length double wishbones. Rear Toronado suspension was a simple beam axle on single leaf springs, unusual only in having dual shock absorbers, one vertical, one horizontal (allowing it to act as a radius rod to control wheel movement).


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: Brakes were hydraulically operated drums, generally considered the Toronado's weak link. As a rather heavy car, after several panic stops the brake drums would overheat, resulting in considerable fade and long stopping distances. The 1967 addition of vented front disc brakes as an option provided substantial improvement.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The Toronado's UPP enabled the interior to have a completely flat floor, but interior space (primarily rear seat headroom) was somewhat restricted by the fastback styling.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: As with many coupes, the Toronado featured elongated doors to allow easier access for passengers entering the rear seats. Duplicate door-latch handles were even added at the rear of each door enabling back seat passengers to open the doors without having to reach over or around the front seat, a feature also available on the other two E-bodies, continuing until 1980 on the Eldorado.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: Drivers faced a highly stylized steering wheel with a double-delta shaped horn ring which framed the view of an unusual "slot-machine" style speedometer, consisting of a stationary horizontal "needle" and a vertically rotating black drum on which the numerals were printed in white. The numerals descended behind the needle as the vehicle gained speed. All other gauges, indicators and controls were grouped within fairly easy reach of the driver.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: Despite an average weight of , published performance test data shows the 1966 Toronado was capable of accelerating from in 7.5 seconds, and through the standing 1/4 mile (~400 m) in 16.4 seconds at . It was also capable of a maximum speed of . Testers found the Toronado's handling, despite its noticeable front weight bias and consequent understeer, was not substantially different from other full-size U.S. cars when driven under normal conditions. In fact, many contemporary testers felt that the Toronado was more poised and responsive than other cars, and when pushed to the limits, exhibited superior handling characteristics, although it was essentially incapable of terminal oversteer.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The 1966 model was widely recognized as a step forward in design, gaining publicity for the division by winning several leading automotive awards, such as "Motor Trend"s Car of the Year Award and "Car Life"s Award for Engineering Excellence. It also was the only American car ever to be awarded recognition in Europe, as the third-place finisher in the European Car of the Year competition.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The Toronado sold reasonably well at introduction, with 40,963 produced for 1966. Some television commercials featured former NASA Project Mercury public affairs officer John "Shorty" Powers, Oldsmobile's primary commercial spokesperson of the era, along with racing legend Bobby Unser driving the vehicle and commenting favorably on the Toronado's handling.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: Sales for the 1967 model, which was distinguished by a slight facelift, the addition of optional disc brakes, and a slightly softer ride, dropped by nearly half, to 22,062. A stereo tape player was optional. It would be 1971 before the Toronado matched its first-year sales volume.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: In 1967, Cadillac adopted its own version of the UPP for the Cadillac Eldorado, using the Cadillac V8 engine. The Eldorado also shared the E-body shell with the Toronado and Riviera, but its radically different styling meant that the three cars did not look similar at all. Also, despite sharing the same platform as the Toronado and Eldorado, the Riviera retained its rear-wheel drive setup, and would not convert to front-wheel drive until the platform was downsized in 1979.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The first-generation Toronado persisted with the usual annual facelifts through 1970. Other than the brakes, the major changes were the replacement of the original V8 with the new in 1968, rated at in standard form or with the W-34 option, revised rear quarter panels (with small fins to disguise the slope of the rear body in side view) in 1969, and the elimination of hidden headlights and the introduction of squared wheel arch bulges in 1970. An ignition lock was added in 1969.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: Slight interior cosmetic changes were made for each new model year, and a full-length center console with floor-mounted shifter was available as an extra-cost option with the Strato bucket seats from 1968 to 1970, though few Toronados were so ordered. The vast majority of customers went for the standard Strato bench seat to take full advantage of the flatter floor resulting from the front-drive layout. The lack of a "hump" in the floor made three-abreast seating more comfortable than in rear-drive cars, as the center passengers both front and rear did not have to straddle one.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The firm suspension and thus the quality of the ride, was gradually softened through the years, hinting at what Toronado eventually would become in 1971. A heavy-duty suspension was an option on later first generation Toronados, which included the original torsion bar springs that were used on the 1966 model.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: A special option code called W-34 was available on the 1968–70 Toronado. This option included a cold air induction system for the air cleaner, a special performance camshaft and a "GT" transmission calibrated for quick and firm up-shifts and better torque multiplication at . Dual exhaust outlets similar to the 1966–67 model years with cutouts in the bumper, were included with W-34. The standard models also had dual exhaust systems, but only a single somewhat hidden outlet running from the muffler exiting rearward on the right side. For 1970 only, the W-34 option also included special "GT" badges on the exterior of the car. The W-34 Toronado was capable of 0–60 mph in 7.5 seconds and the standing 1/4 mile in 15.7 seconds at .


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: With heavily revised styling from the first generation, the Toronado transitioned from a "GT"-style car into a more traditional luxury car. It was now more similar to the Cadillac Eldorado than the Buick Riviera (which would be redesigned in 1974, then again in 1977), with styling taking several cues from the 1967–70 Eldorado. Sales increased dramatically. Front disc brakes became standard. The front end utilized a novel air induction system, splitting the airflow from below the headlights, in a "bottom breather" fashion. When United States Federal bumper standards were implemented, the front air intake was phased out for a conventional approach from below the bumper.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: All overall dimensions of the 1971 Toronado were larger than previous models with wheelbase increased from 119 to , only less than the full-sized Delta 88. Also, the subframe design of first-generation Toronados was replaced by a separate body-on-frame similar to full-sized Delta 88 and Ninety-Eight models. The front torsion bar suspension was retained, but the multi-leaf springs in the rear were replaced by coil springs. In addition, the Toronado introduced as a novelty what later became a federal mandate in a modified form, two high-mounted taillights above the trunk and below the rear window, which was shared on its platform twin the Riviera. These taillights mirrored brake and turn functions of the normal taillights, but not the nighttime taillights. A rear-wheel ABS became optional.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The 455 cubic-inch (7.46 L) Rocket V8 was carried over from previous models as the standard Toronado engine. The introduction of the second-generation Toronado coincided with the implementation of a GM corporate edict that took effect with the 1971 models; all engines had to run on lower-octane regular leaded, low lead or unleaded gasoline to meet increasing more stringent Federal (and California) emission control regulations, a goal that was reached by reducing compression ratios. This was a first step toward the introduction of catalytic converters in 1975, which mandated the use of unleaded fuel. The 1971 Toronado's 455 cubic-inch V8 (7.46 L) was rated at (down from 375 in 1970) with a compression ratio of 8.5:1 (down from 10.5:1 in 1970).


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: For 1972, the advertised rating for the 455 engine dropped to thanks to a switch in power measurements from the gross ratings in which power was measured by a dynometer with no accessories attached to "net" ratings which were measured as installed in a vehicle with all accessories and emissions equipment attached. By 1976, the last year for the 455 engine in the Toronado, the net rating dropped to .


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The 1971–78 generation is mainly noted for the early use of two safety features that are now standard on all cars in the United States, the aforementioned high-mounted taillights (although a somewhat similar feature had appeared briefly as an option on the Ford Thunderbird in the late 1960s), and from 1974 through 1976, the Toronado was part of GM's first experimental production run of driver- and passenger-side airbags, which GM named the Air Cushion Restraint System. These Toronados used a unique steering wheel and were fitted with a knee blocker beneath the driver's portion of the dashboard.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: Styling/engineering highlights through the years included disc brakes with audible wear indicators for 1972, a federally mandated front bumper along with new vertical taillights in 1973, a stand-up hood ornament, 5 mph rear bumper and optional fixed rear side opera windows in 1974 and rectangular headlights in 1975.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The 1973 Toronado went on sale in September 1972 and has a combined fuel economy of between 8.5 and 10.9 miles per gallon. The 1975 through 1978 Toronados had a fuel tank that could hold 26 gallons of gasoline, whereas the 1973 Toronado had a 25.9 gallon capacity fuel tank with 250 horsepower and an axle ratio of 2.73:1. The 1973 Toronado was made from September 1972 to September 1973.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: During most of the Toronado's second-generation run, two interior trims were generally offered each year. The standard interior trim consisted of a choice of cloth or vinyl upholstery and a Custom Sport notchback bench seat with center armrest. An optional Brougham interior available in cloth, velour or vinyl trims included cut-pile carpeting, door-mounted courtesy lighting and a split 60/40 bench seat with armrest. From 1971 to 1973, the Toronado's "Command Center" wrap-around instrument panel was similar to other full-sized Oldsmobiles featuring a large squared speedometer directly in front of the driver, heating/air conditioning and lights/wipers switches on the left hand side and the radio controls and cigar lighter on the right hand side. From 1974 to 1978, a flat instrument panel (again shared with Delta 88 and Ninety-Eight models) was used that featured a horizontal sweep speedometer flanked by a "Message Center" of warning lights, fuel gauge and shift quadrant, with the other controls in the same locations as in previous years.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: As befitting a luxury car, Toronados featured a long list of standard equipment that included Turbo-Hydramatic transmission, variable-ratio power steering, power front disc brakes along with an electric clock, carpeting and deluxe wheel covers. Virtually all Toronados' were sold loaded with extra-cost options including air conditioning, AM/FM stereo with 8-track tape player, power trunk release, vinyl roof, tilt and telescopic steering wheel, cruise control, power windows, power door locks and six-way power seats. Power windows became standard equipment in 1975. A new feature in 1974 was a gauge that monitored if the driver was driving economically or not called the Fuel Economy Gauge which was a vacuum pressure gauge that would determine if the accelerator pedal was being pushed too hard.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The later years of this generation of Toronado saw new features mostly confined to minor styling tweaks to the grille and trim, although in 1977, the XS and XSR models debuted. Both featured a three-sided, hot wire "bent-glass" rear window and, on the XSR, electric t-tops which slid inwards at the touch of a button. However, as built in prototype form, the XSR had no means of channeling water away from the retractable sections, and water would inevitably leak into the cabin. No workable solution to the problem was found, and as such, the XSR model was scrapped. The XS, which did enter production, was offered with GM's more reliable (and no doubt more leak-resistant) Astro roof sliding sunroof instead. Air conditioning was standard.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The running factory "XSR" prototype was documented as "restored" by Collectible Automobile Magazine in the late 1990s.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: Also for 1977, the V8 was replaced by a smaller engine (rated at 185HP/325 lb.ft.), due mainly to forthcoming government Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards (implemented beginning with the 1978 model year). In addition, the 1977 Delta 88 and Ninety-Eight models, formerly the biggest cars in the Oldsmobile stable, were downsized. For two more model years, the Toronado would be the largest Oldsmobile, and, after the mid-sized Cutlass line's downsizing for 1978, the Toronado looked hopelessly out of place in the lineup, given the industry-wide shift to smaller cars. Also in 1977, when Buick removed the Riviera from the E-body lineup and reassigned it to the B-body LeSabre bodyshell, this meant that all E-bodies would be front-wheel drive only.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: This generation was probably helped in the sales race by the radical and controversial "boat-tail" design of the contemporary Buick Riviera, since during this period the Toronado outsold its Buick cousin for the first time. However, the higher-priced Cadillac Eldorado managed to outsell the Toronado in most of these years.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The third generation Toronado was substantially downsized, losing nearly and almost in length. Reflecting its length and wheelbase, it came equipped with the smaller Oldsmobile V8. The engine was rated at 170 HP/270 lb.ft. torque giving it a top speed of over and a acceleration time of 9.4 seconds. This was considered one of the faster times for that era.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: A V8 (140 HP) was introduced in 1980, and a larger version of the Buick V6 (125 HP) shared with the Riviera was made available from 1981 to 1984, but it proved unpopular due to its slow acceleration.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: Also offered in these years was Oldsmobile's new diesel V8, that is based on the division's gasoline-powered V8, but with added block material. This engine was novel and economical, and sales were initially good. The diesel engine acquired a terrible mechanical reputation, becoming a genuine black eye for Oldsmobile. Many cars which originally came diesel-equipped were eventually converted to gasoline engines when disgusted owners finally threw in the towel. The engine was revised through its life, which fixed many issues that hurt its reputation, but it was too late and the engine was eventually dropped.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The three-speed Turbo Hydra-Matic automatic transmission was standard equipment from 1979 to 1981 and replaced by the four-speed Turbo Hydra-Matic 325-4L overdrive unit from 1982 to 1985. The 307 cubic-inch V8 (a smaller-displacement version of the 350 Rocket), was standard on 1985 Toronados.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: Independent rear suspension (designed by Cadillac engineers) was adopted for the new car, which helped to increase usable rear-seat and trunk space in the smaller body, as well as improved handling over previous Toronados with no sacrifice in ride quality. Rear disc brakes were optional.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: In addition to the base Toronado Brougham, various trim packages were available under the XSC (1980–81) and Caliente (1984–85) names were offered along with choices of velour, leather upholstery, even sueded leather inserts and digital instrumentation. The XSC offered individual front bucket seats, as opposed to the traditional split bench front seat usually installed. The third-generation of the Toronado was also made into a convertible by the American Sunroof Company, with a power-operated cloth top. Reclining backrests were an option.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: This generation Toronado, along with its Riviera and Eldorado cousins, were the last body-on-frame, front wheel drive cars with longitudinally mounted V8 engines.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The final generation Toronado made its debut in 1985 for the 1986 model year. It was even smaller on the outside, lost its body-on-frame construction in favor of a unibody platform, and was the first Toronado since 1969 to feature hidden headlights. For the first time ever V8 engines were gone, with the fuel-injected version of the Buick 231 cu in (3.8 L) V6 now the only powerplant available. The new Toronado also came with a nearly 16% price increase over the 1985 model.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: Inside, a new digital instrument panel and optional voice alert system were employed and the same luxury features were offered as standard equipment and options as before. Standard seating was a cloth 60/40 bench with center armrest. For the first time since 1970, Strato bucket seats were offered as an option, and they included a full-length center console with a horseshoe-like "basket handle" gear shift similar to that found in some 1960s and 1970s Buicks and Chevrolets. Upholstery choices included cloth or leather.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: GM's timing with this latest downsizing proved to be off the mark. Gasoline prices had dropped dramatically — below $1.00 per gallon in many parts of the U.S. — by the fall of 1985, against corporate soothsayers' predictions of $3.00 and up. As a result, many traditional domestic car buyers chose to "buy big" in 1986. Along with its shrunken sisters, the Eldorado and Riviera, the Toronado suffered a serious sales decline which would never be reversed. Critics blamed downsizing, its notable price increase over the previous generation model, as well as "cookie cutter" styling that looked too much like the cheaper, less-luxurious compacts at GM, notably the Oldsmobile Calais, Buick Somerset, and Pontiac Grand Am.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: In mid-1987, Oldsmobile attempted to bolster sagging Toronado sales by introducing a sportier model called the Troféo, which boasted standard leather bucket seats, faux dual exhaust, more-aggressive styling, and a stiffer suspension (the highly regarded corporate FE3 package, with retuned shocks, struts and other components).


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: For 1988, changes for the Troféo included new seats and monochromatic paint; both Toronado and Troféo benefited from larger climate control buttons and rear three-point seatbelts. Additionally, power increased with the introduction of the new Buick LN3 V6 engine. Wire wheelcovers were deleted from the options sheet. Other changes were minor and mainly cosmetic.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The 1989 Troféo, which was no longer badged externally as a Toronado, could be ordered with the Visual Information Center: a dash mounted touchscreen CRT that controlled the vehicle's thermostat and radio and also supplied advanced instrumentation such as a trip computer. The VIC could also serve as the interface to an in-car hands-free cell phone. Troféo also received standard anti-lock brakes and a new steering wheel with controls for radio and climate control. Toronados now had standard bucket seats with console or an optional split-bench.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: For 1990, the hood was the only carryover sheet metal as Oldsmobile designers redesigned the body, increasing the overall length by about , enlarging the trunk. A driver-side airbag was standard equipment. The 1991 models had increased horsepower, and remote keyless entry and anti-lock brakes were now standard. Ultrasuede upholstery was an option. The optional moonroof no longer required ordering bucket seats, however, a fully digital instrument cluster was now only available on Toronado models equipped with a front bench seat.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: In 1992, General Motors (GM) and Avis Rent a Car pilot tested a GPS navigation system in select rental Trofeo models equipped with the touchscreen at the Orlando International Airport in Florida. The pilot systems included the built-in cellular phone and a computer-synthesized voice guidance system. Named "TravTek", the system was monitored by AAA via an antenna mounted on the car's trunk, and included directions to AAA locations around the Orlando area.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The 1992 models brought back wire wheels as an option. Troféos got a stiffer standard suspension (the formerly optional FE3 package). By this time, the trend away from personal luxury coupes was too strong to counter. Oldsmobile discontinued the Toronado and Troféo at the end of the 1992 model year, with the last Toronado rolling off the assembly line on May 28, 1992. The Toronado was ultimately replaced in the lineup in early 1994 by the Aurora sports sedan, which made its debut as a 1995 model and shared its platform with the eighth and final generation of the Buick Riviera.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: During the late 1960s (1968–70), the only Oldsmobile professionally made into a limousine was the Toronado, known as the American Quality Coach (AQC) Jetway 707, with the 707 moniker a nod to the Boeing 707. The 707 rode on six wheels, and was 28 ft long with a 185-inch wheelbase. To capitalize on the aircraft theme, the passengers each sat on individual bucket seats. Between 52 and 150 were believed to have been built, and a black one can be seen in a traffic scene in the 1976 movie "All the President’s Men".


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: The 67 X (also Toronado 67X, Esso 67X) is a Canadian-built automobile, based on the Toronado, that was designed and manufactured by automobile customizer George Barris for Canada's Expo 67, where they were raffled off in a contest sponsored by Esso. Only four of these vehicles were ever made, but they included swiveling seats, a sofa, and even a refrigeration unit, with an overall sleek-looking design. Commercials for this vehicle were aired in the Stanley Cup Playoffs final game between the Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs.


title: Oldsmobile Toronado

text: In April 2009, one of these cars came up for auction on eBay. Although in poor condition, it was advertised as the "project car of a lifetime".


title: Roman dictator

text: A Roman dictator was an extraordinary magistrate in the Roman Republic endowed with full authority to resolve some specific problem to which he had been assigned. He received the full powers of the state, subordinating the other magistrates, consuls included, for the specific purpose of resolving that issue, and that issue only, and then dispensing with those powers forthwith.


title: Roman dictator

text: Dictators were still controlled and accountable during their terms in office: the Senate still exercised some oversight authority and the right of plebeian tribunes to veto his actions or of the people to appeal from them was retained. The extent of a dictator's mandate strictly controlled the ends to which his powers could be directed. Dictators were also liable to prosecution after their terms completed.


title: Roman dictator

text: Dictators were frequently appointed from the earliest period of the Republic down to the Second Punic War (218–201 BC), but the magistracy then went into abeyance for over a century. It was later revived in a significantly modified form, first by Sulla between 82 and 79 BC and then by Julius Caesar between 49 and 44 BC, who became "dictator perpetuo" just before his death. This later dictatorship was used to effect wide-ranging and semi-permanent changes across Roman society. After Caesar's assassination in 44, the office was formally abolished. It was never revived.


title: Roman dictator

text: The reasons for which someone might be appointed dictator were varied. The purpose of the dictatorship was not to create some kind of unaccountable or extralegal government, but rather to move Rome back to the status quo before some threat emerged. The dictatorship existed "to eliminate whatever had arisen that was out of bounds and then eliminate themselves so that normal operation of the ordinary government" could resume.


title: Roman dictator

text: The abolition of the Roman monarchy , according to tradition, devolved the royal powers onto two annually elected consuls. The creation of the dictatorship is part of this tradition, which is somewhat confused. Its original title was "magister populi", "master of the infantry". His lieutenant was the "magister equitum", "master of the horse". The dictator may have also been called the "praetor maximus", as mentioned by Livy, referring to an old law requiring such the "praetor maximus" to put a nail into the wall of a temple on the ides of September.


title: Roman dictator

text: It is not certain who the first dictator was or in what year he was appointed. In one account, the first dictator was Titus Larcius in 501 BC. An alternative tradition mentioned by Livy is that the first dictator was Manius Valerius Maximus, although Livy thought this improbable, as he had not previously been consul and, had a Valerius been desired, Manius' brother, Marcus, who was consul in 505 BC, could have been chosen instead. However, few modern scholars put much faith in these traditional accounts: by the time Roman history started being written down, the dictatorship as a military commander had already lapsed out of living memory.


title: Roman dictator

text: The dictatorship seems to have been conceived as a way to bypass normal Roman politics and create a short-term magistrate with special powers, serving to defend the Republic in war, or otherwise to cow internal civil unrest, especially if such unrest imperilled the conduct of war. There are broadly two views on the dictatorship's origin: that it descends from the Latins, or that it was a uniquely Roman institution.


title: Roman dictator

text: The Roman view stresses that the dictatorship is said to have existed from the earliest years of the Republic, created as "an integral part of the republican constitution". And while other Latin cities had dictatorships, they emerged from their abolished monarchies as ordinary magistrates rather than as an extraordinary magistrate only appointed in time of crisis. Others have argued that the dictatorship existed as a means to slip through the inefficiency of a new collegiate magistracy, arguing that the Romans would not have made it—with regal powers—an "integral" part of their constitution in the immediate aftermath of the monarchy's abolition, confining it therefore to a peripheral and extraordinary role. Other scholars have advanced theories that the consuls came "after" the dictatorship rather than before.


title: Roman dictator

text: The Latin view argues that the dictatorship emerged from the need to rotate command between Latin states in the role of commanding the Latin League's united armies. While Rome was not a formal member of the League, it did require the Latins to serve in Rome's wars under a Roman commander, which could have been a dictator appointed for the occasion. One argument of this is the siege of Veii: for nine years of siege, Rome did not resort to a dictator, until the last year when Etruscan intervention compelled Rome to call in its Latin allies. Moreover, it is plausible that the dictatorship was borrowed from other Latin municipalities that had a "dictator" serving as a military commander. This view also stresses continuity between the Roman kingdom and the succeeding republic, with the dictatorship as a bridge between the two periods.


title: Roman dictator

text: The dictator was the only important official in the Roman state that was appointed. The power to appoint a dictator vested in the consuls, one of whom could nominate a man to serve in the office; he did not need to consult his colleague, and no other magistrates had such authority. A dictator, however, could be created by comitial legislation at the proposal of other magistrates, as Sulla and Caesar later were.


title: Roman dictator

text: Consular nomination occurred in a nocturnal ritual, usually preceded by advice from the Senate asking for a specific person to be appointed, but this was not strictly necessary. A vote of the people could be held, but this was unusual, perhaps except in cases with a non-consular nominator. In the case of Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, the people may have created him dictator directly by legislation. After most attested dictators were ex-consuls; it does not appear, however, that this emerged from any kind of legislation, as implied in Livy, to that effect.


title: Roman dictator

text: Dictatorial powers likely extended beyond the term of the nominating magistrate, and most dictators are recorded to have given up their powers as quickly as possible. Customary law may have required dictators to give up their powers immediately after completion of their assigned task.


title: Roman dictator

text: A dictator could be nominated for different reasons, or "causae". These "causae" were akin to "provinciae", spheres of command assigned to a magistrate which bound their freedom of action. The various "causae" were:


title: Roman dictator

text: These reasons could be combined (e.g., "seditionis sedandae et rei gerundae causa", for quelling sedition and for war). However, by the middle Republic the historical record clearly shows that dictators were appointed more as temporary extraordinary magistrates to do some very specifically defined action before resigning, acting as proxies or substitutes for the ordinary magistrates of that year; the historicity of the dictators appointed in the early period to quell sedition—who usually took the side of the protestors—is also debated.


title: Roman dictator

text: The Romans were not consistent in classifying specific threats and then appointing a dictator if they met some criteria. Rather, they judged the matter subjectively such that a dictator in military matters would only be appointed if there were converging threats from multiple enemies, all-consuming ongoing wars, or extinction-level threats to the city which could be handled by a man "whose empowerment with the dictatorship offered more assurance of success than the incumbent magistrates". Alternatively, dictators might be appointed if another consul-like magistrate was needed.


title: Roman dictator

text: Normally there was only one dictator at a time, although a new dictator could be appointed following the resignation of another. A dictator could be compelled to resign his office without accomplishing his task or serving out his term if there were found to be a fault in the auspices under which he had been nominated. After nomination, a dictator would have his "imperium" ratified by "comitia curiata"—bringing that matter before the Assembly himself—in a manner akin to that of the consuls.


title: Roman dictator

text: Like other curule magistrates, the dictator was entitled to the "toga praetexta" and the "sella curulis". The dictator, however, was accompanied by twenty-four lictors rather than the normal twelve lictors of the consul. However, within the "pomerium" he may have displayed twelve.


title: Roman dictator

text: In a notable exception to the Roman reluctance to reconstitute the symbols of the kings, the lictors of the dictator never removed the axes from their fasces, even within the "pomerium", symbolising their power over life and death and setting the dictator apart from the ordinary magistrates. the lictors of other magistrates could not bear fasces at all when appearing before the dictator.


title: Roman dictator

text: The Latin theory of the dictatorship's origin has also suggested that the twenty-four lictors emerged from the uniting of "two governments". It may have also simply signalled that a dictator's "imperium" was superior to that of the consuls or that he was endowed with the power of both consuls. As the kings had been accustomed to appear on horseback, this right was forbidden to the dictator unless he first received permission from the "comitia".


title: Roman dictator

text: The full extent of the dictatorial power was considerable, but not unlimited. It was circumscribed by the conditions of a dictator's appointment, as well as by the evolving traditions of Roman law, and to a considerable degree depended on the dictator's ability to work together with other magistrates. The precise limitations of this power were not sharply defined, but subject to debate, contention, and speculation throughout Roman history.