#sauropterygia

[alex-fictus]

Plesiosaurs and Pliosaurs!

Plesiosaurus - Elasmosaurus Lindwurmia - Styxosaurus Liopleurodon - Dolichorhynchops - Kronosaurus

Stickers || Phone Wallpapers Masterlist

Planned or in the works:

[makairodonx]

A huge 6-meter-long Liopleurodon ferox ambushes an unfortunate juvenile Cryptoclidus and camps its toothy jaws upon the small plesiosaur’s head 160 million years ago in the warm, shallow seas of what is now the Oxford Clay Formation of England.

[stavrosskundromichalis]

Oldest sea-going reptile from the Southern Hemisphere!

New paper by Benjamin Kear et al. (with artwork by yours truly, first time for a scientific find🤩) that documents a nothosaur that swam along the shores of an ancient polar super-ocean covering what is now the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand 246 million years ago. This discovery reveals the early global radiation of marine reptiles, which as the authors show probably dispersed across both the southern and northern high-latitudes to dominate the world’s oceans at the dawn of the Age of Dinosaurs. The paper is open access and can be read in the scientific journal Current Biology.

[mariolanzas]

MONQUIRASAURUS

One of the many animals featured on my new video dedicated to Sauropterygians

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NOW ALSO AT BlueSky

[alphynix]

While the most iconic types of plesiosaur were long-necked with small heads and short blunt snouts, some of these marine reptiles actually developed the opposite sort of arrangement, with groups like the polycotylids and the pliosaurs independently evolving short necks, larger heads, and long snouts.

…Except some of them didn't keep it quite that simple.

Serpentisuchops pfisterae here lived during the late Cretaceous, about 70 million years ago, in the ancient Western Interior Seaway covering what is now Wyoming, USA. This 7m long (~23') plesiosaur was a member of the polycotylid lineage, but along with a long slender snout it also had an unusually long neck.

Some earlier polycotylids like Thililua had fairly long necks, too, but all of Serpentisuchops' closest relatives were short-necked species, so it seems to have actually re-evolved this condition rather than inheriting it from its ancestors. Since no other marine reptiles in its habitat had this particular body plan, it was probably occupying a very specific ecological niche – the presence of attachment points for powerful neck muscles suggest it was able to swing its head sideways to snap its jaws at prey at high speed, with its longer neck giving it more reach than other polycotylids.

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[actual-haise]

Quick drawing of the recently described plesiosaur Franconiasaurus from the Early Jurassic of Germany

[ildarotyrannus]

I apologize for such a long delay. I couldn't find the motivation to keep posting here. But, as I promised in my last post, here are three more drawings made for last year's scientific conference. :)

Front half of Dakosaurus andiniensis, massive metriorhynchid from Late Jurassic of Argentina. As with Cricosaurus, I based this reconstruction on metriorhynchid specimens with skin. Note the presence of speculative skin parasites, whose marks were founds in fossil skin. Also, there are salt glands in antorbital fenestra. This feature is based on this study: https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ar.24678 BTW, some recons portray Dakosaurus with crocodile-like facial integument and some recons even have "lips"! I decided to diversify from these both options and did it with smooth streamlined skin.

Prognathodon sp. reconstruction based on purportedly juvenile specimen with soft tissue outlines from Late Cretaceous of Jordan. This small individual was described in this paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3423 Preserved skin impressions include silhouettes of the skin fringes of the flippers and the caudal fin. The caudal fin is quite small, but in adults it could be proportionally larger. This finding confirmed that mosasaurs converged with ichthyosaurs and metriorhynchids to develop a fish-like caudal fin.

And finally, Seeleyosaurus guilelmiimperatoris (formerly species of Plesiosaurus), a microcleidid plesiosaur from Early Jurassic of Germany. Holotype of this species is almost complete specimens with some skin impressions including rhomboidal skin flap. Perhaps all plesiosaurs had caudal fins of one form or another. However, their orientation is controversial: many paleontologists are of the opinion that the fin was vertical, but others think it was horizontal.The arguments in favor of the second point of view are the rigidity of the chest, the flat and wide shape of the tail in the proximal part and the absence of bending in the distal part of the tail: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339423536_Peculiarities_of_the_Structure_and_Locomotor_Function_of_the_Tail_in_Sauropterygia I decided to choose this version for reconstruction. Which of the scientists is closer to the truth, new findings will show. All of these drawings were done with black gel ink pen and black colored pencil with small additions of white gouache.

[justgoji]

Evolution of plesiosaurs (with Hatsune Miku for scale)

[megsdoodletag]

Unktaheela Specta breaching from the Western Interior Seaway on a sunny afternoon

[identifying-prehistoric-wildlife]

Liopleurodon ferox

spec'd into big head short neck instead of small head long neck

[makairodonx]

Jurassic June 2024 Day 7: Plesiosaurus dolichoderius

[mariolanzas]

NEW VIDEO!

Plesiosaurs and other Sauropterygians

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[identifying-prehistoric-wildlife]

Liopleurodon ferox

“are you a yaoi fan or a yuri fan” i’m liopleurodon

[kaijuthespacemaniraptorian]

The Ocean Demon; Akiarus

The Akiarus are Leviathan type monster that lives in costal regions of the old and new world, it is a large aquatic reptile that occupies a niche different from other marine apexes, they arent apex predators and they are a bit common than most other predators, they eat different prey from others such as small fish, sharks shelled molusces and also scavenges meat on land, they have also been observed to work together as a pod to take down large preys such ass juvenile ceadeus, they also have a defense mechanism in the form of water beams these monsters can absorb water through their throat and stores them in a specialized sack next to their lungs and they can spit water soo hard it boils, these monsters sometimes disturbs local costal villages to steal their supplies of fish and many villagers are terrified of them and given the name The Ocean Demon!

Classification; Leviathan Order: Pantestudines Suborder; Eosauropterygia Superorder; Sauropterygia Family: Nothosauridae

Size; 40ft long Elements: Water Ailments: Waterblight Weakest To: Fire

You can leave your thoughts down here on the replies i would love to see what you all think of this monster i made that would be appreciating ^w^!

[actual-haise]

Quick drawing of Hydrotherosaurus

[eggcrumbb]

Ranting about him (more specifically my favorite prehistoric reptile)

(My drawing and picture)

Albertonectes vanderveldei

(Genus)

Superorder- sauropterygia

Order-plesiosauria

Family-elasmosauridae

Subfamily-elasmosaurinae

Campanian Late Cretaceous 100.5-66 Ma

Alberta, Canada

Name deriving from Alberta and nectes is a Greek word for "swimmer"

Carnivores, specifically piscivores, eating fish with their long necks

Total length of ~37 ft and their necks themselves were ~23 ft with 76 neck vertebraes making it the longest necked animal of elasmosaurs

Discovered by Tai Kubo, Mark T. Mitchell, and Donald M. Henderson in 2012

I researched for a while and have been reading on them for a while now and this is all the informatiom I could find :( if you know anything else i would love to collect more facts to know !!

I love them because of their long necks and ive always been drawn to aquatic creatures !!!!