I can't think of any mechanical reason why they couldn't, and funnily enough Ben Kear just published this:Most of the depictions of these animals seem to be in shallow Jurassic seas of the time - if this was pliosaur preferred habitat, then they surely could have dived to the bottom to munch on the large mollusks of the time, correct?
Yes, it's tempting to think of these things as just bloody big generalists. Killer whales much 100,000kg whales and 0.1kg sardines, and lots of stuff in between - that's a prey size range covering 6 orders of magnitude. Sure, the upper and lower ends of that niche are helped by some pretty complex and famous behaviour patterns, but that's still a broad range. Is this a general theme for marine apex predators?I would think they would be opportunistic eaters. If they could catch it, they ate it.
But what about the deeper waters when crossing from one sea to another - could these leviathans hit swirling schools of larger fish like some kind of monstrous seal?
Cheers Colin
-- Colin McHenry Computation Biomechanics Research Group http://www.compbiomech.com/ School of Engineering (Mech Eng) University of Newcastle NSW 2308
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