The original interpretation of
Plesiosaurus involved what could arguably be called the most gracile neck in all of paleontology. Since that time the neck's ability to flex and stretch has been looked over many different times by many different people and the overall arc of movement has changed each time. That range of motion is less than it used to be, but we still have the wonderful illustrations of Knight, Williston, and a host of other illustrators to show us the strangeness of the original descriptions of
Plesiosaurus necks. Sometimes the tail is also rather oddly illustrated as well. Check the images below. The images are almost all of
Plesiosaurus but there are some
Elasmosaurus interpretations masquerading as
Plesiosaurus as well.
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| Image: Charles R. Knight |
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| Image: Edward Riou |
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| Image: Edward Riou |
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| Note the tail on this version |
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| Image: S.W. Williston; actually an Elasmosaurus |
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| Image: Dmitry Bogdanov |
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