#DOLPHINS 3D RENDITION SOFTWARE#

вЂњBecause our experiments are all digital, we can easily recreate some hypothetical morphologies,вЂќ said Gutarra DГaz. They were also able to control morphological factors that influenced movement. That was how they were able to get an idea of drag and lift that resulted from the body of a plesiosaur or icthyosaur moving through the ocean.

#DOLPHINS 3D RENDITION SOFTWARE#

The models were then loaded them onto computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software that let them вЂњswimвЂќ and allowed the researchers to adjust the physical properties of water, such as density, and how it flowed around a given creature. Mosasaurs like the one in Fallen Kingdom werenвЂ™t included in the study, but were probably closest to killer whales morphologically. Some of those fossils are nearly complete skeletons. They used modeling software to create 3D models of plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs, dolphins, and whales, with the extinct species based on actual fossils that had been amazingly preserved. To find out the impact of the size and shape of immense marine creatures, both extinct and extant, on their swimming, Gutarra DГaz and her team ran simulations that were like virtual water tanks. Plesiosaur necks evolved with the rest of their bodies for maximum efficiency. вЂњVery long necks were likely advantageous for feeding or hunting, but it seems that plesiosaurs could not exploit these advantages until their bodies were large enough to offset the high drag.вЂќ вЂњBody morphology reflects evolutionary trade-offs in a diversity of biological functions,вЂќ Gutarra DГaz told SYFY WIRE. Plesiosaurs had apparently evolved huge bodies and flippers that gave them the advantage of almost flying underwater. Paleobiologist Susana Gutarra DГaz of the University of Bristol, who led a study recently published in Nature, has now found that it was really the size of these leviathans that determined how they moved. They still survived for millions of years. While plesiosaurs werenвЂ™t all neck, the morphology of creatures such as Elasmosaurus, which had the longest neck out of all of them, could mean drag held them back when they swam. That seems as if it would get in the way. Plesiosaurs might have had the most bizarre of body types, with necks that could grow as long as an entire giraffe (up to about 20 feet). Some, like the Mosasaur that devoured Indominus Rex in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, were built more like sharks or whales. Monsters they were, but how could something like a plesiosaur even swim? It was previously assumed that the body shapes of prehistoric marine reptiles allowed them to hunt and compete with other predators. Reptilian things with outsize necks slithered through the oceans, snapping up unfortunate prey in their jaws, though they had been long extinct by the time humans started with the shipwreck legends. There was a time when sea monsters were real.

Dolphins 3d rendition