We Finally Know How This Ancient Reptile Lived With Such an Absurdly Long Neck - ScienceAlert

If you squint, this could be what one odd-looking Triassic reptile called Tanystropheus looked like.

This animal's assortment of ludicrously long fossilised neck bones has confused the heck out of palaeontologists for nearly 170 years.

"Tanystropheus looked like a stubby crocodile with a very, very long neck," says palaeontologist Olivier Rieppel from Chicago's Field Museum.

Unlike those in a snake or lizard, the cervical vertebrae in Tanystropheus fossils are stretched out like a giraffe's.

"The power of CT scanning allows us to see details that are otherwise impossible to observe in fossils," says lead author Stephan Spiekman, an expert in Triassic reptile evolution at the University of Zurich.

"From a strongly crushed skull we have been able to reconstruct an almost complete 3D skull, revealing crucial morphological details," says Spiekman.

"The small species likely fed on small shelled animals, like shrimp, in contrast to the fish and squid the large species ate," says Spiekman.

"This is really remarkable, because we expected the bizarre neck of Tanystropheus to be specialised for a single task, like the neck of a giraffe.

The fact that the two, very similar species had such different ways of using their long bodies made it much easier for them to exist in the same habitats, sharing their environment without competing for the same food sources