Liopleurodon Pronunciation

Fun Facts

• ✓The famous BBC Walking with Dinosaurs special in 1999 showed Liopleurodon at an impossible 80 feet long, but real fossil evidence puts it closer to 20 to 23 feet, making the TV version about four times too big.
• ✓Liopleurodon may have been able to 'smell' underwater by flushing water through its nostrils and detecting chemical gradients, similar to how sharks track prey across miles of ocean today.
• ✓The type species, Liopleurodon ferox, is known primarily from isolated teeth first described by French paleontologist Henri Emile Sauvage in 1873, meaning scientists have been arguing about this animal for over 150 years.
• ✓Liopleurodon belonged to the pliosaur group, which moved through water by rowing all four flippers in a figure-eight pattern, a style of swimming that no living animal uses today and that scientists only figured out using computer simulations.
• ✓One tooth from Liopleurodon found in the Oxford Clay of England measured over 3 inches long just at the crown, and because teeth in living predators are often twice as long below the gumline, the full tooth could have been as long as your entire hand.