Tag: sea turtle

Eons Roundup 11

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

  • An illustration of an extinct marine reptile. It has a lizard-like body and a long paddle-like tail, and a small head with an oddly-shaped wide mouth lined with many tiny teeth – the overall shape of its bizarre jaws resembles the head of a vacuum cleaner!
    Atopodentatus unicus
  • An illustration of an extinct marine reptile. It resembles a turtle with a wide squared-off beak, small spikes on the back of its head, and a wide carapace shaped vaguely like a horseshoe crab.
    Henodus chelyops

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

  • An illustration of an extinct giant marine turtle. it has a ridged shell like a leatherback, and a hooked eagle-like beak.
    Archelon ischyros
  • An illustration of an extinct sea turtle.
    Euclastes platyops

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

Ocepechelon

Ocepechelon bouyai, a sea turtle from the late Cretaceous of Morocco (~70-66 mya). Closely related to the modern leatherback turtle and the pug-nosed Alienochelys, it’s only known from a single 70cm-long skull (2′4″) – and while its body proportions aren’t known for certain it was probably very big, possibly up to 4m long (13′).

Unlike any other known turtle it had a unique narrow tube-shaped snout. This is thought to be an adaptation for suction feeding, vacuuming up tiny fish, squid, and jellyfish in a similar manner to modern pipefish or beaked whales.

Alienochelys

Alienochelys selloumi, a sea turtle from the Late Cretaceous of Morocco (70-66 mya). Although only known from a single skull, it was probably around 2-2.5m long (6′6″- 8′2″), and was closely related to both the modern leatherback turtle and the giant Archelon – and so it wouldn’t have had a solid shell but instead a leathery skin-covered carapace.

But that one skull was also incredibly weird. While most turtles have pointed beaks, Alienochelys had a blunt squared-off face, sort of “pug-nosed”, with its nostrils set high up between its eyes. It seems to have been specialized for crushing hard-shelled prey between the wide flat grinding surfaces of its beak, more similar to the jaws of rays than those of other turtles.

It also lived alongside another bizarre-jawed turtle, but that’s a subject for another time.