Fossil suggests giant marine dinosaur gave birth

A giant marine reptile that existed nearly 80 million years ago is believed to have been able to give birth, according to scientists who have authored a new study published in Science Magazine.The Plesiosaur, a giant, carnivorous, four-flippered reptile that dominated the oceans in the Mesozoic Era, gave birth to live young, rather than hatching their offspring from eggs on land, according to the scientists who authored the study, F. Robin OKeefe, a paleontologist at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, and Luis Chiappe, director of the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles.The pair studied the fossil of a 78-million-year-old, 15.4-foot-long adult specimen, which had contained within it an embryonic skeleton with a developing body, including ribs, 20 vertebrae, shoulders, hips, and paddle bones.Although live birth has been documented in several other groups of Mesozoic aquatic reptiles, no previous evidence of it has been found among plesiosaurs. Doctors OKeefe and Chiappe have also determined that plesiosaurs were unique among aquatic reptiles in giving birth to a single, large offspring, and that they may have lived in social groups and engaged in parental care.