Likely evolving from archosaurians and turtles, these reptiles developed aquatic features that made them thrive in the ocean. According to sources, the Liopleurodon gave birth to one offspring at a time, and they were likely the size of a baby whale.

Robinson, J, A. 1975. The locomotion of plesiosaurs. Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie un Paläontologie – Abhandlungen, 149, 286–332. This made them conclude that the Liopleurodon had an average length of 16-23 feet. Gage Beasley Prehistoric’s Liopleurodon Size Comparison Chart Mounted skeleton of Liopleurodon ferox in the Tübingen Museum, Germany (from Martill and Naish, 2000). After receiving these fossils for examination, Henri Émile Sauvage, a paleontologist, named them the Liopleurodon ferox.The Peking Natural Science-Art Organisation have a diverse range of detailed dinosaur toys and statues. The Liopleurodon genus of the Pliosauridae family were marine reptiles that dominated the marine ecosystem during the Jurassic period almost 160 million years ago.

After birth, baby Liopleurodon likely stayed with their mothers until they were mature enough to care for themselves.This brawl is one of the reasons scientists believe that most youngsters did not make it to adulthood. Over the years, several findings established the existence of the Liopleurodon during the Jurassic period, but all these were still uncommon knowledge for a while. As the apex predators that they were, Liopleurodon had a wide variety of prey, ranging from ichthyosaurs to marine crocodiles, sharks, and other pliosaurs.

Halstead knew the validity of ‘ Stretosaurus‘ was questionable much earlier than his formal declaration and reallocation of the genus to Liopleurodon in 1989. As early as 1977, in collaboration with Robinson, he had re-evaluated the diagnostic scapula of ‘ Stretosaurus‘ as an ilium (Robinson, 1977), so the genus ‘Stretosaurus’was already called into question by then. The last publication I can find where Tarlo/Halstead refers to ‘Stretosaurus’ as a valid taxon is in 1971 (Halstead, 1971). So, perhaps he (and Robinson?) came to the conclusion that ‘ Stretosaurus‘ was Liopleurodon sometime between 1971 and 1977. If so, and if the reconstruction was partly based on the ‘Stretham Pliosaur’, this could explain Robinson (1975) attributing the reconstruction to Liopleurodon.Although the Liopleurodon was a giant animal, it was not as big as the Australian giant Kronosaurus, which had a maximum length of 36 feet.