Talk:Plotosaurus

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I have just added archive links to  on Plotosaurus. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20051226094055/http://www.nhm.org:80/journey/prehist/marine/plotosaurus.html to http://www.nhm.org/journey/prehist/marine/plotosaurus.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070724044423/http://www.paleoportal.org/index.php?globalnav=fossil_gallery to http://www.paleoportal.org/index.php?globalnav=fossil_gallery§ionnav=detail&submission_id=687&taxon_id=&state_id=&period_id=18&assemblage_id=&last_section=search
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Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 13:40, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: https://www.livescience.com/mosasaur-breaststroke-swimming.html
Poorly edited article, and results not yet published, but interesting. Paper presented at the recent GSA meeting in PHX. --Pete Tillman (talk) 16:21, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Using our image, no less... FunkMonk (talk) 18:26, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plotosaurus swimming style: new study 

message: Hi . Gregory S. Paul in 2022 estimated the size of Plotosaurus at  in length and  in body mass. Is there an exceptionally large Plotosaurus skull or skeleton that could reach this size? I'm asking this, since this is even heavier than his M. hoffmannii estimate (and since you're pretty much the mosasaur expert in Wikipedia). Junsik1223 (talk) 01:37, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm just a mosasaur enthusiast :) The only other source that has mentioned 13m was a website called Prehistoric Wildlife, but they don't explain which fossil this was based on; the max skull size they provided is too small. The largest skull that I know of is 79.1 cm along the lower jaw (Camp, 1942), but this isn't big enough to realistically yield a 13m plotosaur. It's possible that the estimate was based on extrapolating some exceptionally large vertebra(e) (since the skeletal reconstruction of Plotosaurus is quite rigorous) that I either overlooked or is unpublished. Also, I would caution against taking Paul's field guide as authoritatively as scholarly papers because it makes a lot of bold disputations against published research without discussing them and providing justification (although it's because the book is a field guide), and I've heard from some paleoartists that some of his reconstructions are really inaccurate (I don't have full access to the book, but I've heard that Paul depicted Plotosaurus as an anguilliform swimmer, which is the opposite of the rigorously supported carangiform mode of swimming), although there's also pretty good ones too. The reason why I ran with his 13m estimate for Mosasaurus hoffmannii was because a size around that has already been seen as more accurate by the paleontological community for years but nobody published anything officially proposing it besides him. Also keep in mind that Paul is going over hundreds of species within a relatively short span. While his opinions deserve consideration, I think they should be viewed with more scrutiny.  Macrophyseter | talk 05:50, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah Paul's pterosaur book was the worst in this regard, although the sea reptiles one is so much better. The 13 m estimate is not the first here, but this was from a 2016 article that found a referred specimen of Plotosaurus in Central Chile.  The article claims that an adult Plotosaurus would be 10~13 m but a justification was not exactly stated; it's kinda strange considering that even the article which synonimised P. tuckeri to P. bennisoni suggested a maximum length of 8 m. Junsik1223 (talk) 09:12, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I wouldn't use that estimate outside of stating that the paper made that estimate without referring to any specific fossils. Slate Weasel is also right; its possible that the official publication of the book may have better input. Macrophyseter | talk 19:56, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Size estimate