Weird Heads Month #05: Crested Snorkelers

Phytosaurs were a lineage of incredibly crocodile-like archosauriformes – essentially “crocodiles before crocodiles” – convergently evolving an incredibly similar appearance at a time when the ancestors of modern crocs were still small and terrestrial.

But while they had toothy snouts and bodies heavily armored with bony ostederms, unlike crocodilians their nostrils were far back on their heads up near their eyes, often in a sort of bony “snorkel” so they could breathe while almost fully submerged underwater.

Mystriosuchus westphali lived in Germany during the Late Triassic, about 215-212 million years ago. Around 4m long (~13′), it was even more aquatic than other phytosaurs, with paddle-like limbs and long slender gharial-like jaws adapted for catching slippery prey.

And along with the typical phytosaur snorkel, it also had raised crests along its upper jaw – which may have supported even larger keratinous display structures.

Nicrosaurus

Nicrosaurus kapffi from the Late Triassic of Germany, about 221-205 million years ago. Although rather crocodile-like in appearance, this 4-6m long (13′-19′8″) animal was actually part of an extinct group called phytosaurs – long-snouted heavily-armored reptiles with their nostrils high up on their heads near their eyes.

Phytosaurs’ exact evolutionary relationships are still disputed, with opinions currently going back and forth between them being archosauriformes or an early branch of the croc lineage within the true archosaurs. But either way they weren’t directly ancestral to modern crocodilians, and instead developed a very similar body plan via convergent evolution.

While some phytosaurs had very slender gharial-like snouts and probably fed mostly on fish, others like Nicrosaurus had much more robust jaws and seem to have secondarily adapted to a terrestrial predator lifestyle. They had longer limbs and a more upright posture than their semi-aquatic relatives, and enlarged fangs at the hooked tips of their jaws that may have been used to deliver a powerful stabbing blow to their prey.

Nicrosaurus also had a raised bony crest running along its snout, which I’ve depicted here as supporting an even larger soft-tissue display structure.