SEARCH FOR PLESIOSAURUS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18511, 23 March 1922, Page 5

SEARCH FOR PLESIOSAURUS

A PATAGONIAN EXPEDITION. Prces Assocktkm—By Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, March 20. The Buenos Aires correspondent of the Daily Mail recalls the brontosaurus story by a' message announcing that an expedition has left for the wilds of Patagonia to search for the plesiosaurus. This is an outcome of hunters’ stories of a monstrous prehistoric reptile seen disporting itself in remote pools at the foot of the Andes. Scientists ridicule such a possibility. [The plesiosaurus is an extinct marine reptile to the order Sauropterygia, which characterised the Mesozoic period, and had an almost world-wide distribution. Tbe animal is best known by nearly complete skeletons found in England and Germany. It has a small head, a long and slender neck, a round body, a very short tail, and two pairs of large, elongated paddles. The only traces of skin hitherto discovered suggest that it was smooth. The reptile must have been almost exclusively aquatic, feeding on cuttle-fishes, fishes, and other animal prey. It propelled itself chiefly by the paddles, scarcely by the tail. The cretaceous cimolosaurus found in North and South America, Europe, and New Zealand, is very similar to the plesiosaurus.]