Tag: reptile

Titanoboa

Titanoboa cerrejonensis, a boine snake from the Mid-to-Late Paleocene of Colombia, South America (~60-58 mya). Estimated to have reached lengths of up to 12-14m (39-46′) it was one of the largest known snakes of all time, about twice the length of the biggest modern anacondas and pythons. It was probably able to reach such a huge size due to a combination of factors – mainly a very warm climate and the absence of large terrestrial predators immediately following the K-Pg extinction a few million years earlier.

Despite frequently being depicted eating dyrosaurid crocodiles, the anatomy of Titanoboa’s skull suggests it primarily fed on fish. Considering that some of the fish in its tropical riverine habitat were some of the largest available prey in the area, reaching around 3m in length (10′), a piscivorous diet would actually make a lot of sense for a such a big snake.

Teleocrater

Teleocrater rhadinus from the Middle Triassic (~245 mya) of Tanzania. Measuring about 2.5m long (8′2″), it was one of the earliest known members of the avemetatarsalians – the dinosaur-and-pterosaur (or “bird-line”) branch of the archosaurs. Its fossils have been known for over 80 years, but it was only very recently given an official name and classification following the discovery of additional specimens in 2015.

It turned out to be rather different from what paleontologists had expected an early bird-line archosaur to look like. Instead of being a bipedal basal-dinosaur-like animal, Teleocrater was actually a quadruped with more crocodilian-like limbs and oddly elongated neck vertebrae.

I’ve done two variations of the image today – both with and without a little speculative proto-fuzz.

An illustration of an extinct reptile related to the ancestors of dinosaurs and pterosaurs. It's a quadrupedal animal with a lizard-like head, a long neck, crocodile-like limbs, and a long tail.
Teleocrater rhadinus (no fuzz version)

Unsolved Paleo Mysteries Month #09 – The Unknown Ugly Crocodile

In 1923, paleontologist Charles Camp recorded the discovery of an unusual-looking skull from the Late Triassic (~220 mya) of Arizona, USA. He made a field sketch before attempting to remove the fossil from the surrounding rock – only for it to completely fall apart, leaving just a couple of intact fragments covered in odd bony knobs.

Camp’s original drawing of the Acallosuchus fossil, and the remaining broken pieces. Scale bars equal 5cm for H and 1cm for I. [source]

The fossils were stored away at the University of California Museum of Paleontology and were left forgotten for the next sixty years. Eventually they were rediscovered by Robert Long and Phillip Murry, and described in 1989 with the name Acallosuchus rectori (meaning “Rector’s ugly crocodile”).

But what is it?

At first it was classified as a proterochampsid, a group of archosauriforms known from South America. But this classification was based on some additional skeletal remains that were thought to belong to it, which were later split off and named as the semi-aquatic Vancleavea instead. It’s also been compared to Doswellia and the pseudosuchian Revueltosaurus.

The material is just far too fragmentary to make a confident identification, and the original sketch is anatomically unclear. At best we can say that Acallosuchus was an “indeterminate diapsid” – some sort of reptile, but for now nobody knows what.

I’ve restored it here based mainly on proterochampsids, but any interpretation of this animal is going to be highly speculative until more fossil material is found.

Spinoaequalis

Spinoaequalis schultzei, an early diapsid reptile from the late Carboniferous of Kansas, USA (~300 mya). Measuring about 30cm long (1′), it appears to have been semi-aquatic, with limbs like a typical terrestrial reptile but also possessing a long flexible paddle-like tail to aid in swimming – making it one of the earliest amniotes to experiment with “returning to the water”.

Drepanosaurus

One of my favorite palaeontological discoveries of 2016 also involved one of my favorite extinct animals: the odd little “monkey lizard” Drepanosaurus.

Living during the Late Triassic of Europe and North America (~218-212 mya), this reptile measured about 50cm long (20″). It was already known to have some particularly weird anatomy, featuring a humped back, grasping feet, a prehensile tail ending in vertebrae modified into a pseudo-claw, enormous claws on the second finger on each hand, and a bizarre arrangement of its forearm bones.

In 2016, new fossils gave us a better look at those arm bones, and they turned out to be even stranger than previously thought. As well as the radius and ulna being unusual, several wrist bones were also heavily modified and elongated, creating an arm setup unique among all known tetrapods. This may have been a specialization for “hook-and-pull” digging, ripping up tree bark to get at burrowing insects – but now the real mystery is why no other tetrapods have ever managed to modify their limb bones to this sort of extreme.