Pre-historic long-necked reptiles were decapitated by their predators – study

L ong-necked reptiles that lived at the same time as dinosaurs may have been decapitated by predators, fossil evidence suggests. While the marine creatures' extremely long necks may have been an evolutionary strategy, palaeontologists long suspected that their long-necked bodies made them vulnerable to predators. But researchers say that after almost 200 years of continued research, direct fossil evidence confirms this scenario for the first time in the most graphic way imaginable. In the new study, researchers looked at the unusual necks of two Triassic species of Tanystropheus, a type of reptile distantly related to crocodiles, birds, and dinosaurs. The…