39-502: Plesiosauroidea ( / ˈ p l iː s i ə s ɔːr / ; Greek : πλησιος plēsios 'near, close to' and σαυρος sauros 'lizard') is an extinct clade of carnivorous marine reptiles . They have the snake -like longest neck to body ratio of any reptile. Plesiosauroids are known from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods . After their discovery, some plesiosauroids were said to have resembled "a snake threaded through
78-543: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in
117-477: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and
156-526: A large number of small babies. Before this study, plesiosauroids had sometimes been portrayed crawling out of water to lay eggs in the manner of sea turtles, but experts had long suspected that their anatomy was not compatible with movement on land. The adult plesiosaur measures 4 m (13 ft) long and the juvenile is 1.5 m (4.9 ft) long. [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] Ancient Greek Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes
195-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in
234-550: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment
273-608: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek . There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek
312-630: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c. 300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as
351-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and
390-482: A warm-blooded metabolism similar to that of mammals. They could generate endothermic heat to survive in colder habitats. Plesiosauroids evolved from earlier, similar forms such as pistosaurs . There are a number of families of plesiosauroids, which retain the same general appearance and are distinguished by various specific details. These include the Plesiosauridae , unspecialized types which are limited to
429-570: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of
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#1732786787636468-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected
507-666: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to
546-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in
585-549: Is known from a nearly complete and articulated skeleton missing the skull and about 38% of the upper neck vertebrae . It was found by Sönke Simonsen, an amateur paleontologist, in 2007 from the Höxter district near Bielefeld , in the east of North Rhine-Westphalia , Germany. Furthermore, it was first named by Leonie Schwermann and Martin Sander in 2011 and the type species is Westphaliasaurus simonsensii . The generic name
624-567: The Early Jurassic period; Cryptoclididae , (e.g. Cryptoclidus ), with a medium-long neck and somewhat stocky build; Elasmosauridae , with very long, flexible necks and tiny heads; and the Cimoliasauridae , a poorly known group of small Cretaceous forms. According to traditional classifications, all plesiosauroids have a small head and long neck but, in recent classifications, one short-necked and large-headed Cretaceous group,
663-622: The Great Estuarine Group (then known as 'Series') of western Scotland. Many others have been found, some of them virtually complete, and new discoveries are made frequently. One of the finest specimens was found in 2002 on the coast of Somerset (England) by someone fishing from the shore. This specimen, called the Collard specimen after its finder, was on display in Taunton Museum in 2007. Another, less complete, skeleton
702-759: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect
741-715: The Polycotylidae , are included under the Plesiosauroidea, rather than under the traditional Pliosauroidea. Size of different plesiosaurs varied significantly, with an estimated length of Trinacromerum being three meters and Mauisaurus growing to twenty meters. The following cladogram follows an analysis by Benson & Druckenmiller (2014). Plesiosaurus Eretmosaurus Westphaliasaurus Microcleididae Plesiopterys Cryptoclididae Elasmosauridae Leptocleididae Polycotylidae Unlike their pliosauroid cousins, plesiosauroids (with
780-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)
819-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):
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#1732786787636858-495: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from
897-601: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs, Westphaliasaurus Westphaliasaurus is an extinct genus of plesiosaur from Lower Jurassic ( Pliensbachian stage) deposits of Westphalia , northwestern Germany . It
936-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has
975-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in
1014-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West
1053-615: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of
1092-599: The exception of the Polycotylidae) were probably slow swimmers. It is likely that they cruised slowly below the surface of the water, using their long flexible neck to move their head into position to snap up unwary fish or cephalopods . Their four-flippered swimming adaptation may have given them exceptional maneuverability, so that they could swiftly rotate their bodies as an aid to catching prey. Contrary to many reconstructions of plesiosauroids, it would have been impossible for them to lift their head and long neck above
1131-673: The forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c. 1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c. 1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c. 800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c. 500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been
1170-561: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from
1209-476: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to
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1248-508: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which
1287-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c. 1450 BC ) are in
1326-520: The same time as dinosaurs, they did not belong to the latter. Gastroliths are frequently found associated with plesiosaurs. The first complete plesiosauroid skeletons were found in England by Mary Anning , in the early 19th century, and were amongst the first fossil vertebrates to be described by science. Plesiosauroid remains were found by the Scottish geologist Hugh Miller in 1844 in the rocks of
1365-591: The shell of a turtle", although they had no shell. Plesiosauroidea appeared at the Early Jurassic Period (late Sinemurian stage) and thrived until the K-Pg extinction , at the end of the Cretaceous Period. The oldest confirmed plesiosauroid is Plesiosaurus itself, as all younger taxa were recently found to be pliosauroids . While they were Mesozoic diapsid reptiles that lived at
1404-578: The surface, in the " swan -like" pose that is often shown. Even if they had been able to bend their necks upward to that degree (which they could not), gravity would have tipped their body forward and kept most of the heavy neck in the water. On 12 August 2011, researchers from the U.S. described a fossil of a pregnant plesiosaur found on a Kansas ranch in 1987. The plesiosauroid, Polycotylus latippinus , has confirmed that these predatory marine reptiles gave birth to single, large, live offspring—contrary to other marine reptile reproduction which typically involves
1443-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies
1482-480: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,
1521-481: Was also found in 2002, in the cliffs at Filey , Yorkshire, England, by an amateur palaeontologist. The preserved skeleton is displayed at Rotunda Museum in Scarborough. Plesiosauroids had a broad body and a short tail . They retained their ancestral two pairs of limbs, which evolved into large flippers . It has been determined by teeth records that several sea-dwelling reptiles, including plesiosauroids, had
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