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#ichthyosaur
sticksandsharks · 1 year
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little cretaceous guys + guest appearance of our even older friend the gorgonpsid (triceratops, pteradon, carnotaurus, parasaurolophus, deinonychus, ichthyosaur, gorgonopsid, repenomamus)
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great-and-small · 2 months
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I love baby ichthyosaur fossils because you can see that the eye took up like 95% of their head
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I’m pretty confident they must’ve held the title of cutest baby animal on planet Earth for several million years looking like this
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the-bonclave · 11 months
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If you've been following paleo news lately, then you know ichthyosaurs have been screwing with evolution again.
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Please welcome Franconiasaurus brevispinus!
A new plesiosaur from the early Jurassic of Germany and a important missing link in plesiosaur evolution! Congratulations to the three authors, here the paper for those who haven't seen it
I have a rather personal connection to this specimen because me and Sven were on a road trip to the EAVP meeting in Munich when we came across this fossil in Bayreuth. It was quite the surprise walking into the collection and finding this, already largely out of the matrix.
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It was quite funny to see Sven dive right in and after roughly 15 min of looking at it proclaiming, "pretty sure that's a new genus", I think we had a name for it already on the drive back
Franconiasaurus wasn't an apex predator, that time hadn't come yet for plesiosaurs, but it fills an important evolutionary gap between basal and more derived plesiosaur clades of the Jurassic. Here a little overview of animals that lived with it. This formation, the Jurensismergel, isn't as productive as the underlying Posidonia shale, but it's also a thinner, and less studied formation. Quite a few fossils still await a proper description or a name. These Temnodontosaurus for example.
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A little background for my illustration. The Jurensismergel appears to preserve largely a deep water environment but I wanted to show the animal not in a blue void or with some dark sludge near the bottom so I gave it a patch reef to rest on, sourced from some locally available Muschelkalk. The whole presentation is very much inspired by the collection of the Museum in Bayreuth. down to the Temnodontosaurus rostrum jutting out of the ground here. Saurichthys is known from the Jurensismergel but the Dapedium and other fish were burrowed from Posidonia.
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when you zoom in you can see crustaceans climbing over and cleaning the Franconiasaurs.
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glaucophane · 8 months
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Ichthyosaurs really just be like that.
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bobnichollsart · 1 month
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Today's random portfolio artwork is "Bait Ball," an old painting from 2009. It was created with ye olde acrylic paint and paintbrush, and airbrush for the background. Originally created for the Museum of Jurassic Marine Life, UK, but it has been all over the place these past 14 years or so.
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sketchy-as-fork · 8 months
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Late Triassic Spa Day for the whale-sized ichthyosaur, Shonisaurus
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aberrantologist · 8 days
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Argovisaurus, a newly named Jurassic ichthyosaur, rises from the depths of the ocean.
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alphynix · 8 months
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Crystal Palace Field Trip Part 2: Walking With Victorian Dinosaurs
[Previously: the Permian and the Triassic]
The next part of the Crystal Palace Dinosaur trail depicts the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Most of the featured animals here are actually marine reptiles, but a few dinosaur species do make an appearance towards the end of this section.
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Although there are supposed to be three Jurassic ichthyosaur statues here, only the big Temnodontosaurus platyodon could really be seen at the time of my visit. The two smaller Ichthyosaurus communis and Leptonectes tenuirostris were almost entirely hidden by the dense plant growth on the island.
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Ichthyosaurs when fully visible vs currently obscured Left side image by Nick Richards (CC BY SA 2.0)
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Head, flipper, and tail details of the Temnodontosaurus. A second ichthyosaur is just barely visible in the background.
Ichthyosaurs were already known from some very complete and well-preserved fossils in the 1850s, so a lot of the anatomy here still holds up fairly well even 170 years later. They even have an attempt at a tail fin despite no impressions of such a structure having been discovered yet! Some details are still noticeably wrong compared to modern knowledge, though, such as the unusual amount of shrinkwrapping on the sclerotic rings of the eyes and the bones of the flippers.
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Arranged around the ichthyosaur, three different Jurassic plesiosaurs are also represented – “Plesiosaurus” macrocephalus with the especially sinuous neck on the left, Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus in the middle, and Thalassiodracon hawkinsi on the right.
They're all depicted here as amphibious and rather seal-like, hauling out onto the shore in the same manner as the ichthyosaurs. While good efforts for the time, we now know these animals were actually fully aquatic, that they had a lot more soft tissue bulking out their bodies, and that their necks were much less flexible.
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The recently-installed new pivot bridge is also visible here behind some of the marine reptiles.
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Positioned to the left of the other marine reptiles, this partly-obscured pair of croc-like animals are teleosaurs (Teleosaurus cadomensis), a group of Jurassic semi-aquatic marine crocodylomorphs.
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A better view of the two teleosaurs by MrsEllacott (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The Crystal Palace statues have the general proportions right, with long thin gharial-like snouts and fairly small limbs. But some things like the shape of the back of the head and the pattern of armored scutes are wrong, which is odd considering that those details were already well-known in the 1850s.
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Finally we reach the first actual dinosaur, and one of the most iconic statues in the park: the Jurassic Megalosaurus!
Megalosaurus bucklandi was the very first non-avian dinosaur known to science, discovered in the 1820s almost twenty years before the term "dinosaur" was even coined.
At a time when only fragments of the full skeleton were known, and before any evidence of bipedalism had been found, the Crystal Palace rendition of Megalosaurus is a bulky quadrupedal reptile with a humped back and upright bear-like limbs. It's a surprisingly progressive interpretation for the period, giving the impression of an active mammal-like predator.
This statue suffered extensive damage to its snout in 2020, which was repaired a year later with a fiberglass "prosthesis".
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Reaching the Cretaceous period now, we find Hylaeosaurus (and one of the upcoming Iguanodon peeking in from the side).
Hylaeosaurus armatus was the first known ankylosaur, although much like the other dinosaurs here its life appearance was very poorly understood in the early days of paleontology. Considering how weird ankylosaurs would later turn out to be, the Crystal Palace depiction is a pretty good guess, showing a large heavy iguana-like quadruped with hoof-like claws and armored spiky scaly skin.
It's positioned facing away from viewers, so its face isn't very visible – but due to the head needing to be replaced with a fiberglass replica some years ago, the original can now be seen (and touched!) up close near the start of the trail.
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Two pterosaurs (or "pterodactyles" according to the park signs) were also supposed to be just beyond the Hylaeosaurus, but plant growth had completely blocked any view of them.
Although these two statues are supposed to represent a Cretaceous species now known as Cimoliopterus cuvieri, they were probably actually modeled based on the much better known Jurassic-aged Pterodactylus antiquus.
A second set of pterosaur sculptures once stood near the teleosaurs, also based on Pterodactylus but supposed to represent a Jurassic species now known as Dolicorhamphus bucklandii. These statues went missing in the 1930s, and were eventually replaced with new fiberglass replicas in the early 2000s… only to be destroyed by vandalism just a few years later.
(The surviving pair near the Hylaeosaurus are apparently in a bit of disrepair these days, too, with the right one currently missing most of its jaws.)
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Image by Ben Sutherland (CC BY 2.0)
The Crystal Palace pterosaurs weren't especially accurate even for the time, with heads much too small, swan-like necks, and bird-like wings that don't attach the membranes to the hindlimbs. Hair-like fuzz had been observed in pterosaur fossils in the 1830s, but these depictions are covered in large overlapping diamond-shaped scales due to Richard Owen's opinion that they should be scaly because they were reptiles.
But some details still hold up – the individual with folded wings is in a quadrupedal pose quite similar to modern interpretations, and the bird-like features give an overall impression of something more active and alert than the later barely-able-to-fly sluggish reptilian pterosaur depictions that would become common by the mid-20th century.
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(Much like the statues themselves, the "modern" reconstruction above is based on Pterodactylus rather than Cimoliopterus)
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The last actual dinosaurs on this dinosaur trail are the two Cretaceous Iguanodon sculptures. At the time of my visit they weren't easy to make out behind the overgrown trees, and only the back end of the standing individual was clearly visible.
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Named only a year after Megalosaurus, Iguanodon was the second dinosaur ever discovered, and early reconstructions depicted it as a giant iguana-like lizard.
The Crystal Palace statues depict large bulky animals, one in an upright mammal-like stance and another reclining with one hand raised up. (This hand is usually resting on a cycad trunk, but that element appeared to be either missing or fallen over when I was there.)
Famously a New Year's dinner party was held in the body of the standing Iguanodon during its construction, although the accounts of how many people could actually fit inside it at once are probably slightly exaggerated.
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A clearer view by Jim Linwood (CC BY 2.0)
Considering that the skull of Iguanodon wasn't actually known at the time of these sculpture's creation, the head shape with a beak at the front of the jaws is actually an excellent guess. The only major issue was the nose horn, which was an understandable mistake when something as strange as a giant thumb spike had never been seen in any known animal before.
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(The fossils the Crystal Palace statues are based on are actually now classified as Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis, but the "modern" reconstruction above depicts the chunkier Iguanodon bernissartensis.)
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Image by Doyle of London (CC BY-SA 4.0)
I also wasn't able to spot the Cretaceous mosasaur on the other side of the island due to heavy foliage obscuring the view.
Depicting Mosasaurus hoffmannii, this model consists of only the front half of the animal lurking at the water's edge. It's unclear whether this partial reconstruction is due to uncertainty about the full appearance, or just a result of money and time running out during its creation.
The head is boxier than modern depictions, and the scales are too large, but the monitor-lizard like features and paddle-shaped flippers are still pretty close to our current understanding of these marine reptiles. It even apparently has the correct palatal teeth!
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Next time: the final Cenozoic section!
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ppaleoartistgallery · 3 months
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Paleostream 14/01/2024
results of today's Paleostream!!!
today we sketched Guanlingasaurus, Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis, Orodromaeus, and F̵r̵u̵i̵t̵a̵d̵e̵n̵s̵ Aquilonifer
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jurw0revo · 2 months
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ichthyosaur
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thylacines-toybox · 1 month
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Wooden ichthyosaur by Lanka Kade, bought from a fairtrade gift shop in Paisley in January 2024.
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armadillorollup · 7 months
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icky saurs
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hiddenlizard · 1 month
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A historical depiction of the Late Jurassic Solnhofen Lagoon and its fauna by A. Wessner-Collenbey 1914
in E. Haase (1914): Tiere der Vorzeit [Animals of prehistoric times]. Published by Quelle und Meyer, Leipzig, 168 pages.
via Jan Fischer on Facebook
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Results from the #paleostream! Caudipteryx, Argovisaurus, Pebanista and Holmesina with Castoroides (see update below)
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doomed-jester · 8 months
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Every day I want to grab people and shake them and tell them to shut the fuck up about carcinization. Every day I want to tell them that crustaceans evolving into similar body types isn't that impressive and that it's just adaptation to their ecological niche. The way we define crab is so loose and these are species that are already relatively closely related anyway. Convergent evolution is a broad phenomenon and it happens all the time and there are way weirder examples than a thing that was already nearly a crab becoming a crab.
There's a horse that's a gorilla.
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This is a real animal that existed and lived and walked around in a semi upright posture and it's related to modern horses.
Fish, reptiles and mammals all keep turning into sharks.
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These animals couldn't be much more distantly related while still having a spine. Shut the FUCK UP about carcinization.
Anyway that's what I would say if I was on a website where people weren't all slightly obsessed with crabs.
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