How deep under water could this new dino breathe?

[DaveC426913]

TL;DR Summary

This new dino they've found is almost 50% neck. Could it have lain on the bottom and breathed from the surface?

https://www.sciencealert.com/scient...koKa-7C0kPvWKGVG1hjWnRgFfkTS54wJiZ9W5E2BYCFHY

I didn't infer from the text that the dino's neck rose vertically from the bottom to the surface - it may well have been more prone.

But I do wonder if there is a hard limit to how deep a critter can be and still breathe from the surface.

(Anyone try to breathe through a hollow reed, like in the movies? Try simply breathing through a snorkel while keepnig your body vertical. It's hard to breathe when you lungs are even a foot below the surface.)

 

[hutchphd]

I would guess (purely a guess based upon snorkling and childhood attempts at "long snorkles") that whales are at the limit when they surface and blow.
It strikes me that those dinosaurs perhaps used their long necks to put their heads deep under water while floating on the surface. A lot easier than free diving. Maybe grass or trilobites on the bottom became leisurely snack food...

 

[Klystron]

The skeleton and article remind me of plesiosaurs; long necked free-swimming aquatic reptiles.

Plesiosaurs showed two main morphological types. Some species, with the "plesiosauromorph" build, had (sometimes extremely) long necks and small heads; these were relatively slow and caught small sea animals. Other species, some of them reaching a length of up to seventeen metres, had the "pliosauromorph" build with a short neck and a large head; these were apex predators, fast hunters of large prey.

That article lacks an answer to the breathing question but includes diving:

Few data are available that show exactly how deep plesiosaurs dived. That they dived to some considerable depth is proven by traces of decompression sickness. The heads of the humeri and femora with many fossils show necrosis of the bone tissue, caused by a too rapid ascent after deep diving.