{"id":186085,"date":"2025-11-17T23:02:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T23:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/186085\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T23:02:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T23:02:09","slug":"early-long-necked-marine-reptile-unearthed-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/186085\/","title":{"rendered":"Early Long-Necked Marine Reptile Unearthed in China"},"content":{"rendered":"

The exceptionally long neck of Lijiangosaurus yongshengensis contained 42 cervical vertebrae, according to a research team led by paleontologists from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Reconstruction of nothosaurs about 240 million years ago revealing a hidden diversity from southwestern China: Lijiangosaurus yongshengensis (center), Nothosaurus yangjuanensis (upper left), Nothosaurus luopingensis (upper right), Brevicaudosaurus jiyangshanensis (lower left), and Lariosaurus hongguoensis (lower right). Image credit: Kelai Li.<\/p>\n

Lijiangosaurus yongshengensis inhabited the Middle Triassic seas between 247 and 241 million years ago.<\/p>\n

The ancient creature was a type of nothosaur<\/a>, a clade of marine sauropterygian reptiles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nothosaurs could grow up to 7 m (23 feet) long and swam using four paddle-like limbs.<\/p>\n

They had flattened skulls with a meshwork of slender conical teeth that were used to catch fish and squid.<\/p>\n

\u201cSauropterygia arose as a major marine reptilian clade during the Early to Middle Triassic, persisting as key components of the Mesozoic marine ecosystem for approximately 180 million years,\u201d said lead author Dr. Qinghua Shang and colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe early-diverging sauropterygians include placodonts, pachypleurosaurs, nothosaurs, and early pistosaurs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPlesiosaurs, a symbolic group of extinct reptiles, represent a late-diverging clade from pistosaurs within Sauropterygia.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe nothosaurs are equal to nothosaurians in systematic paleontology, which not only encompass the family Nothosauridae (Nothosaurus and Lariosaurus), but also other species within Nothosauria.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite numerous described species, nothosaurs display lower diversity at the genus level and in anatomical morphology compared to other sauropterygian subgroups.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe body sizes of nothosaurs are typically larger than pachypleurosaurs but smaller than pistosaurs, including plesiosaurs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lijiangosaurus yongshengensis had a small skull and a body length of over 2.5\u2009m (8 feet).<\/p>\n

It evolved an exceptionally long neck with 42 cervical vertebrae, twice the number observed in most coeval sauropterygians.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlesiosaurs are usually characterized by their spectacularly long necks,\u201d the paleontologists said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite the secondary development of short necks in some later-diverging plesiosaurian species, early plesiosaurs and their Triassic ancestral kin, the early pistosaurs, possess impressive elongate necks when the number of cervical vertebrae over 30 is suggested as a synapomorphy of early pistosaurs and plesiosaurs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFollowing this traditional view, we consider only a neck with more than 30 cervical vertebrae as a long or elongate neck in our study.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis iconic character in plesiosaurs is distinctive in secondarily marine tetrapods, when other representatives like ichthyosaurs, thalattosuchians, mosasaurs, and cetaceans are all short-necked and more fish-like.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fossilized skeleton of Lijiangosaurus yongshengensis was found at a previously unknown early Middle Triassic locality of the Beiya Formation in China\u2019s Yunnan province near the eastern Tibetan Plateau and northern Myanmar.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis site differs from the previously documented fossil-rich regions in southwestern China around the boundary between Yunnan and Guizhou provinces,\u201d the researchers said.<\/p>\n

Lijiangosaurus yongshengensis represents the earliest known sauropterygian reptile evolving an exceptionally long neck with 42 cervical vertebrae.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur discovery demonstrates that extreme cervical elongation developing more than 30 cervical vertebrae emerged in sauropterygians prior to the rise of plesiosaurs and their pistosaur ancestors,\u201d the scientists said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFurthermore, Lijiangosaurus yongshengensis possesses a unique type of accessory intervertebral articulation compared with other reptiles, and we attribute this structure to reducing body undulation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis discovery increases the known diversity of accessory intervertebral articulations in reptiles, and underscores the high plasticity of the vertebral column in the early evolution of sauropterygians.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s paper<\/a> appears in the journal Communications Biology.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

W. Wang et al. 2025. Earliest long-necked sauropterygian Lijiangosaurus yongshengensis and plasticity of vertebral evolution in sauropterygian marine reptiles. Commun Biol 8, 1551; doi: 10.1038\/s42003-025-08911-1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The exceptionally long neck of Lijiangosaurus yongshengensis contained 42 cervical vertebrae, according to a research team led by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[104655,381,18,4696,19,17,104656,104657,34684,104658,104659,24067,104660,133,75702,104661,104662],"class_list":{"0":"post-186085","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-beiya-formation","9":"tag-china","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-fossil","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-lijiangosaurus","15":"tag-lijiangosaurus-yongshengensis","16":"tag-neck","17":"tag-nothosaur","18":"tag-nothosauridae","19":"tag-reptile","20":"tag-sauropterygia","21":"tag-science","22":"tag-triassic","23":"tag-vertebra","24":"tag-yunnan"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}