Sticking your neck out: How did plesiosaurs swim with such long necks?

(Society for Experimental Biology) When dinosaurs ruled the land, plesiosaurs ruled the oceans. Famous for their incredibly long necks -- some of which were up to 7 meters long -- plesiosaurs have remained an evolutionary mystery for hundreds of years. Pernille V. Troelsen, a Ph.D. student at Liverpool John Moores University, UK is simulating plesiosaur locomotion with a 3-D model to understand how they could swim with such long necks.