SAFARI LTD Elasmosaurus Figure

The first Elasamosaurus fossil was described by the famous American paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope in 1868. Cope was a fossil lizard expert, and this led to a curious mistake. Lizards have short necks and very long tails. Plesiosaurs like Elasmosaurus, in contrast, have short tails and long necks – no other reptile looks like this. Cope was in a hurry to publish his description of Elasmosaurus, and in his haste, he put the skull on the end of the tail, thinking that it was the neck. Given what was known at the time about reptiles, this was an understandable mistake, it was extremely embarrassing. Cope spend a lot of time and money trying to buy back all of the copies of his original description so that he could correct his mistake and put the head on the right end of the animal. Elasmosaurus was a large marine reptile that lived during the Late Cretaceous (about 80 million years ago) in a shallow sea that once covered what is now central North America. It belonged to a group of reptiles called plesiosaurs which are characterized by the possession of a very long neck, small head, turtle-shaped body with flippers rather than legs, and a short tail. Feature: - Scientific Name: Elasmosaurus, which means ‘thin plate lizard’. This odd name refers to the thin, plate-like bones in the hip skeleton of this animal. - Characteristics: At nearly 50 feet and three tons, Elasmosaurus was one of the biggest plesiosaurs. Although its head was quite small, its jaws were filled with long pointed teeth. Its long neck allowed Elasmosaurus to quickly swing its head in all directions and snatch fish as they swam by. All four limbs were modified into paddles that the Elasmosaurus used like oars to row itself through the water. The tail as too short to have been used for propulsion – it was probably used like a rudder to steer. - The Elasmosaurus is part of the Wild Safari® Prehistoric World collection. Specifications: - Dimensions: 25,25 x 12 cm