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Nothosaurus
''Nothosaurus'' ("false lizard", from the Ancient Greek nothos (νόθος), "illegitimate", and sauros (σαῦρος), "lizard") is an extinct genus of sauropterygian reptile from the Triassic period, approximately 240-210 million years ago, with fossils being distributed from North Africa and Europe to China. It is the best known member of the nothosaur order.
A complete skeleton of the species ''Nothosaurus raabi'', now a synonym of ''N. marchicus'', can be seen in the Natural History Museum in Berlin.
==Palaeobiology==
''Nothosaurus'' was a semi-oceanic animal which probably had a lifestyle similar to that of today's seals. It was about , with long, webbed toes and possibly a fin on its tail. When swimming, ''Nothosaurus'' would use its tail, legs, and webbed feet to propel and steer it through the water. The skull was broad and flat, with long jaws, lined with needle teeth, it probably caught fish and other marine creatures. ''Nothosaurus'' hunted by sneaking up slowly on prey, such as shoals of small fish, then putting on a last-minute burst of speed. Trackways attributed, partly by process of elimination, to a nothosaur, that were reported from Yunnan, China in June 2014, were interpreted as the paddle impressions left as the animals dug into soft seabed with rowing motions of their paddles, churning up hidden benthic creatures that they snapped up.〔((LiveScience) Tia Ghose, "Ancient long-necked 'sea monsters' rowed their way to prey", reporting the scientific article published in ''Nature Communications'' 11 June 2014: accessed 28 November 2014. )〕 Once caught, few animals would be able to shake themselves free from the mouth of ''Nothosaurus''.
In many respects its body structure resembled that of the much later plesiosaurs, but it was not as well adapted to an aquatic environment. It is thought that one branch of the nothosaurs may have evolved into plesiosaurs such as ''Liopleurodon'', a short-necked plesiosaur that grew up to , and the long-necked ''Cryptoclidus'', a fish eater with a neck as long as .
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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