Seeleyosaurus

Seeleyosaurus guilelmiimperatoris here was a smallish plesiosaur (about 3.5m long / 11’6″) found in Germany during the early Jurassic, about 182 million years ago.

And back in the 1890s, a specimen of this species was discovered with soft tissue impressions showing a diamond-shaped tail fin.

But despite us knowing about plesiosaur tail flukes for such a long time, they’re surprisingly under-represented in reconstructions, never seeming to have become associated with the popular image of these animals in the same way that early pterosaur’s tail vanes did. It doesn’t help that no other direct impressions of plesiosaur tail fins have ever been found, or that the Seeleyosaurus specimen’s soft tissue got painted over at some point in the mid-1900s, making it incredibly difficult to study without causing further damage. 

(Perhaps modern non-invasive scanning techniques could be able to see under the paintjob, but as far as I’m aware nobody’s tried that yet.)

These tail fins are usually assumed to have been vertically oriented like those of other aquatic reptiles, moving side-to-side and acting like a rudder. However, there’s also a hypothesis that their fins might have actually been horizontal more like those of modern cetaceans and sirenians, based on several anatomical quirks – such as their tail regions being very wide and flat at the base, and the vertebrae at the tip being unusually pygostyle-like, very different from the way the tail bones of vertically-finned reptiles look.

Silesaurus

Silesaurus opolensis here was a type of dinosauriform – a reptile very closely related to the ancestors of true dinosaurs, but not quite actually a dinosaur itself.

Living in Poland during the Late Triassic (~230 million years ago), it was a quadrupedal animal roughly the size of a large modern dog, about 50cm tall at the shoulder (1’8″) and 2m long (6’6″). The front of its lower jaw was toothless and covered with a keratinous beak, and there may have been a corresponding much smaller beak at the very tip of its upper jaw, too.

It was originally thought to be a herbivore, but coprolites full of insect remains suggest it was probably more of an omnivore, possibly foraging by pecking in a convergently similar manner to its distant bird cousins.

In fact, one of those pieces of Silesaurus poop was recently found to preserve a new species of tiny beetle in incredible detail.

Eons Roundup 11

It’s time for another batch of PBS Eons commission work!

The marine reptiles Atopodentatus and Henodus, from “The Triassic Reptile With ‘Two Faces'”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8W26SiCylI


The marine turtles Archelon and Euclastes, from “The Return of Giant Skin-Shell Sea Turtles”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmb8XCwb3FI

Austrolimulus

Horseshoe crabs are famous examples of “living fossils“, having changed their external appearance very little over hundreds of millions of years. But some fossil species were much more varied in shape than their morphologically conservative modern relatives, such as Austrolimulus fletcheri here.

Living in freshwater environments in what is now New South Wales, Australia, during the Middle Triassic (~247-242 million years ago), Austrolimulus had incredibly long spines on each side of its head, reaching a span of around 18cm (7″) – wider than its total body length!

The function of these spines is unclear, but they may have acted like a hydrofoil in fast-moving currents, or they may have served a defensive purpose by making Austrolimulus‘ carapace too wide and unwieldy for some predators to deal with.

Heliosus

Just before the 2017 solar eclipse, some unusual fossils were discovered in Southern Wyoming, USA.

Consisting of a partial jawbone and a humerus, and dating to the mid-Eocene (~47 million years ago), the remains clearly belonged to an early even-toed ungulate – but one much bigger than the rabbit-sized herbivores known from that time. This was something closer in size and build to a large modern pig, standing at least 1m tall at the shoulder (3’3″).

It turned out to belong to a member of a somewhat obscure lineage known as the helohyids, a group whose evolutionary relationships are a bit uncertain but are generally considered to be part of the whale-and-hippo lineage. These pig-like animals were large opportunistic omnivores, possibly occupying a similar ecological role to the later entelodonts, with some Late Eocene forms reaching sizes comparable to black bears.

This new helohyid was named Heliosus apophis, inspired by the eclipse, with its genus name meaning “sun pig”, and its species name referencing a sun-devouring Ancient Egyptian deity.

It was one of the earliest known large-bodied members of the group, and shows that these animals must have increased in size very rapidly during their early evolution, going from rabbit-sized to pig-sized within just a couple of million years.

Pleurosaurus

The modern tuatara is the only living representative of an entire major lineage of reptiles known as sphenodontians – an evolutionary “cousin” group to all lizards and snakes, last sharing a common ancestor with them over 240 million years ago.

And during the Triassic and Jurassic these lizard-like animals were a widespread and diverse bunch, found worldwide and occupying many of the ecological roles that were later taken over by true lizards. They ranged from tiny insectivores to omnivores, relatively large herbivores, and specialized shell-crushers – and some even adapted to a fully aquatic fish-eating lifestyle.

Pleurosaurus ginsburgi here lived during the Late Jurassic, about 150-145 million years ago, in the warm shallow seas and lagoons that covered most of Europe at that time. Fossils of this particular species are known from southern France, with the closely related Pleurosaurus goldfussi found in both the same region and the German Solnhofen Limestone.

These swimming sphenodontians could grow to around 1.5 in length (~5′), with elongated bodies, pointed triangular snouts with retracted nostrils, short flipper-like forelimbs, and especially long eel-like tails. Soft tissue impressions also show scaly skin covering their bodies and a “frill” running along the top of the tail.

Stenaulorhynchus

Taking place during the 50-million year span between two huge mass extinctions, the Triassic was a very weird time. At the start of the period there was world domination by the synapsid Lystrosaurus, then after a few million years of recovery time came an evolutionary “explosion” from the rest of the survivors – filling new roles in their ecosystems and producing a brief but bizarre menagerie of unique species.

And one of the groups that rose to prominence during this time were the rhynchosaurs. Part of the archosauromorph branch of reptiles, they were closely related to the ancestors of crocodilians, pterosaurs, and dinosaurs, and evolved from small superficially lizard-like forms living in southern Africa during the very start of the Triassic, around 250 million years ago. But within just a few million years they became larger and bulkier, specialized for herbivory and scratch digging, and they soon spread all over Pangaea and became incredibly abundant in some fossil deposits.

Stenaulorhynchus stockleyi was one of larger member of this lineage, around 1.2m long (4’), known from Tanzania about 247-242 million years ago. It had a typical triangular rhynchosaurian skull, with wide deep cheeks supporting powerful jaw muscles and multiple rows of grinding teeth, along with a narrow hooked “beak” formed from the premaxillary bones of its snout.

Its unclear what the actual life appearance of the rhynchosaur “beak” was, with some reconstructions having a shrinkwrapped “alien mole-rat” look, others giving them keratinous parrot-like actual beaks, and still others going with fleshy tuatara-like lizard lips. In the past I’ve leaned somewhat towards the latter, but since one fossil does actually show some evidence for a keratinous covering I’ve gone for an extensive full beak this time around.

Squaloraja

Discovered in the late 1820s by pioneering paleontologist Mary Anning, the odd-looking fossil of the cartilaginous fish Squaloraja polyspondyla seemed to have characteristics of both sharks and rays.

It was initially thought to be a “missing link” transitional form between those two groups, but later it was identified as being something else entirely – it was actually part of the chimaera lineage, much closer related to modern ratfish, and its ray-like features were due to convergent evolution for a bottom-feeding lifestyle.

Living during the early Jurassic period, about 200-195 million years ago, Squaloraja fossils are now known from the south coast of England, southern Belguim, and northern Italy. Around 30cm long (1’), this weird fish had a massive wide flat snout that looked like an even more extreme version of the long noses seen in some of its modern relatives, and this enormous snoot would have been absolutely packed with sensory receptors to help it locate small aquatic prey hidden in the muddy seafloor.

Some specimens also have a distinctive long horn-like spine on their foreheads, and since these individuals also have claspers it seems like this was a sexually dimorphic feature. Much like the smaller head claspers on modern chimaeras, male Squaloraja probably used this “horn” to hang onto females’ pectoral fins during mating – and with it being such a large elaborate structure it may also have been used for visual display purposes, too.

Diasparactus

A group of early tetrapods known as diadectids were some of the first land animals to become specialized herbivores, developing adaptations for the bulk processing of tough fibrous vegetation. They had powerful jaws, chisel-like front teeth, and grinding cheek teeth, and they grew to relatively large sizes for their time with bulky bodies supporting voluminous plant-fermenting guts.

Although usually considered to be reptilomorphs – “amphibian-grade” animals more closely related to amniotes than to modern amphibians – some studies have instead placed these early plant-eaters as being true amniotes related to the synapsids. Fossil trackways show they may have had amniote-like claws on their feet, and that their highly flexible lizard-like ankle joints allowed them to walk much more efficiently than other early tetrapods, possibly using a semi-upright gait, but these may be convergently evolved features. Since we don’t know whether they laid amniote-like eggs or if they instead spawned amphibian-style in water, it’s currently hard to tell for certain just what they really were.

Diasparactus zenos (sometimes alternately known as Diadectes zenos) was a diadectid that lived during the early Permian in New Mexico, USA, about 296 million years ago. Around 1.3m long (4’3”), it was only about half the size of its largest relatives, but it’s notable for having unusually high neural spines on its vertebrae – not quite long enough to be considered a sail, but more of a “high back” that may have supported powerful musculature or fatty deposits.

Perplexisaurus

If there’s any equivalent to carcinization in mammals, it’s turning into an otter-beaver-like semi-aquatic form.

Because it just keeps happening.

Modern examples alone include otters, beavers, muskrats, giant otter shrews, desmans, aquatic genets, yapoks, lutrine opossums, and platypuses – and in the fossil record there were early pinnipeds, remingtonocetids, pantolestids, stagodontids, and Liaoconodon going as far back as the early Cretaceous. Even outside of the true mammals there were also Castorocauda, Haldanodon, and Kayentatherium during the Jurassic, and much further back in the late Permian there was the early cynodont Procynosuchus.

So a non-cynodont synapsid doing the exact same thing really isn’t all that surprising.

Perplexisaurus foveatus was a member of the therocephalians, a group of synapsids that were close evolutionary “cousins” of the cynodonts-and-true-mammals lineage. Similar in size to a modern rat, about 20cm long (8″), it lived in Western Russia during the Late Permian about 268-265 million years ago.

At the time this region was a river plain with a tropical climate, experiencing seasonal floods that turned the whole area into what’s known as “viesses” (a name based on the abbreviation “V.S.S.” standing for “very shallow sea”), vast shallow lake-seas that persisted for weeks or months at a time.

So this little animal has been interpreted as being semi-aquatic, swimming around and feeding on aquatic invertebrates and tiny fish and amphibians. Its skull had numerous pits around the front of its face, suggesting that it had a highly sensitive snout – probably whiskery, allowing it to hunt entirely by touch in dark murky water, but it’s also been proposed to have possibly had an electroreceptive sense similar to modern platypuses.