Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hey everybody,

I work at a dinosaur museum and we are currently working on a project to make an improved life restoration model of a mosasaur. For those of you who don't know, a mosasaur was a type of marine reptile that dominated almost every ocean food chain at the end of the Cretaceous period. Monitors are the closest living relatives to mosasaurs, and the relationship is a very close one. In order to make our model as accurate as possible, I'm trying to gather some good research on what they might have looked like while swimming. So, if any of you have photos or video of your monitors swimming, I would really appreciate it if you could send them to me. I can also use photos of monitors in a dry environment, but I'm really trying to duplicate the body contours of a swimming lizard.
Thank you all for reading this and thank you in advance for any help you can give me.

Hey, I caught your request just in time. I was soaking my V. Rudicollis this afternoon and snapped a few pics of him swimming a bit. Some are rather fuzzy, as it was hard to track his short quick bursts across the tub, but I think you'll get the general idea. When he's full out swimming, his front legs tuck against the sides of his body, his rear legs just hang back and he uses his body and tail in a undulating motion to propel himself. The first pic shows him half swimming/half walking.

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Chris
1.0.0 Columbian Boa
1.0.0 Columbian x Hogg Island Boa
0.1.0 Argentine Rainbow Boa
1?.1?.0 Bearded Dragons
0.0.1 Black Throat Monitor
0.1.0 Black Rough-neck monitor

Thank you for the awesome photos. Those are exactly what I need!

you will see the same side to side undulation in pretty much all reptiles and fish because they have similar muscle structure. Marine mammals swim much differently having evolved from land mammals(the documentary "Evolution: Great Transformations" shows in detail the differences and explains the evolution of sea mammals... and it part of an awesome series of vids). Look at the pics posted of the monitor in the tub and check out any videos of marine iguanas swimming that you can find. Their tail is vertically flattened to aid in swimming using the same undulation motion as fish... or like a snake in warter. That will give you an idea of motion you would expect even in a large marine reptile. Videos of monitors running may be helpful as well because you will see the same body undulation.