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Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water … swimming a 50 foot long reptile with huge teeth – that could make the breaststroke.
Scientists think that one of the scariest monsters ever to have roamed the seas was able to play the popular swimming style while it was hunting.
The mosasaurs, which had died out at the end of the Cretaceous period 66 million years ago, had huge teeth and a powerful jaw to shred their prey.
And the researchers say that they did it by performing the breaststroke.
A team from the University of Southern California (USC) examined the Plotosaurus fossil – a type of mosasaur measuring up to 13 meters – at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
According to scientists, the largest known mosasaur species, Mosasaurus hoffmannii, may be 17 meters long.
The mosasaur had a muscular breaststroke that helped them ambush their prey with lateral bursts of velocity, researchers said.
"We know that mosasaurs most likely used their tails to move," said lead author Kiersten Formoso, a PhD student in vertebrate paleontology at the University of California from South).
"Now, we think they've also used their forelimb, or their tail and forelegs together.
"The mosasaurs swam like nowhere else."
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She said that this style of double swimming would make mosasaurs unique among all four-membered tetrapods, living or extinct.
Previous studies had noted the creature's unusually large breast, but assumed that its long tail was essentially dependent on its long tail for swimming, such as alligators or whales. This is known as "cruising" as opposed to the "burst" movement of a breaststroke.
"As with anything that swims or flies, the laws of fluid dynamics mean that bursting with the cruise is a compromise," said co-author of the study, Dr. Mike Habib, assistant professor in anatomical sciences at the USC.
"Few animals are good to both."
By studying the Plotosaurus fossil, along with the chest measurements of other studies, they discovered that mosasaurs were able to undergo breaststroke.
The research has not yet been peer reviewed, but Ms. Formoso presented the results at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America earlier this week.
The largest exposed Mosasaur skeleton, nicknamed "Bruce," can be seen at the Canadian Fossil Discovery Center in Manitoba, Canada. It is approximately 43 feet (over 13 m) long.
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