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lesless · 2 years
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My new treasure~
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gaetaniu · 9 months
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Un'interessante analisi dello sviluppo sessuale di un rettile marino estinto
Keichousaurus – Ricostruzione dal vivo di due Keichousaurus. Gli scheletri fossili hanno da tempo affascinato i ricercatori come finestra sulla preistoria. Ma finora si sa poco sui dettagli dello sviluppo sessuale nelle creature estinte. Un team internazionale di ricercatori provenienti da Cina, Germania e Giappone, con una significativa partecipazione dell’Università di Bonn, ha riportato sulla…
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mothfur-remade · 5 years
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I have aquired:
The boi ™️
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wtf-triassic · 4 years
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Hupehsuchus nanchangensis
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By Scott Reid 
Etymology: Hubei crocodile
First Described By: Young & Dong, 1972
Classification: Biota, Archaea, Proteoarchaeota, Asgardarchaeota, Eukaryota, Neokaryota, Scotokaryota Opimoda, Podiata, Amorphea, Obazoa, Opisthokonta, Holozoa, Filozoa, Choanozoa, Animalia, Eumetazoa, Parahoxozoa, Bilateria, Nephrozoa, Deuterostomia, Chordata, Olfactores, Vertebrata, Craniata, Gnathostomata, Eugnathostomata, Osteichthyes, Sarcopterygii, Rhipidistia, Tetrapodomorpha, Eotetrapodiformes, Elpistostegalia, Stegocephalia, Tetrapoda, Reptiliomorpha, Amniota, Sauropsida, Eureptilia, Romeriida, Disapsida, Neodiapsida, Ichthyosauromorpha, Hupehsuchia, Hupehsuchidae
Referred Species: H. nanchangensis
Status: Extinct
Time and Place: Between 248 to 247 million years ago, in the Olenekian of the Early Triassic 
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Hupehsuchus is known only from the Jialingjiang Formation in the Hubei Province of China. 
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Physical Description: At first glance, Hupehsuchus looks a lot like what you’d expect a primitive ichthyosaur to look like, and indeed they are related. Only around 1-2 metres (3-6 feet) long, its body is long and streamlined, with a long, pointed snout lacking teeth, limbs evolved into large rounded paddles, and a long flattened tail without a fluke. However, on closer inspection Hupehsuchus turns out to be much more bizarre.
Like other hupehsuchians, Hupehsuchus is heavily armoured with vertically layered rows of osteoderms running down its back over the vertebrae (you read that right, they’re on top of each other). These osteoderms interlock with each other, which may have stiffened the body and/or provided ballast. The vertebrae themselves have tall neural spines, giving Hupehsuchus an almost humpbacked appearance, and the neural spines appear to be made up of two separate pieces, one attached to the vertebra, the other seemingly attached to the osteoderms. Only hupehsuchians have vertebrae like that. Its body was probably compressed from side to side, taller than it was wide, and was only flexible around the hips and tail. The armour on its back is complemented by a robust, thick ribs that almost create a shield around its sides, and it even has heavily built, interlocking gastralia on its underside complete with another row of smaller osteoderms on the underside.
The skull of Hupehsuchus is also very unusual. The jaws are long, pointed, and the skull was seemingly quite broad and flat from above, resembling a duck’s bill. The lower jaws were incredibly thin and loosely attached to each other, and were probably capable of bending and bowing outwards like a pelican or baleen whale. The lower jaw may even have supported a large gular pouch, and large hyoid bones imply it had a powerful tongue. Furthermore, several parallel grooves in the upper jaw suggest the presence of a baleen-like structure in its mouth, making it even more uncannily similar to baleen whales. The neck, though, is relatively long and slender compared to a whale.
Diet: The bizarre adaptations of Hupehsuchus suggest it may have been a filter-feeder, sifting small particles and animals out of the water column or near the sea bed.
Behavior: Hupehsuchus was likely a lunge-feeder, in spite of its relatively long neck. The laterally compressed body and flexible hips and tail indicate that it swam by undulating through the water, likely lunging forwards suddenly through swarms of plankton and other small organisms to feed. The flexible jaws of Hupehsuchus imply that it engulfed large amounts of water as it fed, like whales, and would have strained it out through its filtering structures using its tongue.
Hupehsuchus almost certainly gave birth to live young, like ichthyosaurs. Partly because its anatomy was totally unsuited for crawling onto land to lay eggs, but also because one of the oldest ichthyosaurs, Chaohusaurus, is known to have given birth to its babies head-first, the opposite of the tail-first birth in other ichthyosaurs. Babies born head-first in water are at risk of drowning during birth, so this implies that live birth evolved in the ancestors of ichthyosaurs while they were still on land, which would mean that Hupehsuchus likely would have inherited this trait too.
Ecosystem: Hupehsuchus, and indeed all other hupehsuchians for that matter, are known only from a single locality in China. Here Hupehsuchus coexisted with its fellow hupehsuchians Nanchangosaurus, little short-necked Eohupehsuchus, the tubular Parahupehsuchus (I’m sensing a pattern here) and the truly bizarre platypus-faced Eretmorhipis (along with an undescribed polydactylous species!).
The diversity of hupehsuchians in this one habitat likely lead to diverse niche partitioning between them. Hupehsuchus was one of the largest, and seemingly occupied a more active lifestyle, lunge-feeding on organisms in the water. Nanchangosaurus had a similar skull to Hupehsuchus, and so may have had a similar diet, but it was smaller and had a body shape more suited for swimming along the sea bed. Parahupehsuchus was so heavily encased in armour that its body was practically a bony tube, and rather than round paddles it had pointed flippers, suggesting a different swimming style (for what, we don’t know). The bizarrest of them all, Eretmorhipis, may have specialised in grubbing blindly through the seabed, sensing prey with its bill like a platypus, possibly even at night.
The habitat is believed to have been a shallow lagoonal environment, perhaps sheltered from larger predators that could have preyed upon them, like giant nothosaurs. However, they nonetheless coexisted with the primitive ichthyosaur Chaohusaurus and two species of pachypleurosaur (sauropterygians related to nothosaurids), Keichousaurus and Hanosaurus, as well as an undescribed large sauropterygian 3-4 metres (10-13 feet) long. Strangely, no fish have been discovered in this formation, so it’s quite possible that the smaller hupehsuchians were the main food source for some of these larger marine reptiles (as evidenced by a bite taken out of one Eohupehsuchus paddle!). These conditions may have also prompted the strange dietary adaptations of the hupehsuchians, with no smaller fishes to eat, they specialised in eating tiny marine invertebrates and other plankton.
Other: Hupehsuchians are very mysterious marine reptiles, they are known from only one location in the whole world and from a very narrow range of time in the earliest Triassic. Hupehsuchus was once suggested to be a missing link between the ichthyosaurs and their as-yet-unknown terrestrial ancestors, although as more early ichthyosauromorphs have been discovered it is clear that is not the case, and that hupehsuchians are a bizarre offshoot of their own.
Hupehsuchus is part of a surprisingly diverse range of early-derived ichthyosauromorphs that lived in China during the Early Triassic, just a few million years after the Permian Mass Extinction, including the first proper ichthyopterygians and the peculiar (possibly amphibious) nasorostrans like Cartorhynchus. These marine reptiles were very quick to diversify in the wake after the extinction, as the strange filter-feeding lifestyle of Hupehsuchus testifies, quite the opposite of the predicted slow recovery for marine ecosystems. However, it remains a mystery why only the ichthyosaurs prevailed, and all the other strange and diverse ichthyosauromorphs like Hupehsuchus never even made it into the Middle Triassic. Perhaps they were just too strange and specialised even for the Triassic.
~ By Scott Reid
Sources under the Cut 
Carrol, Robert L.; Dong, Z.-M. (1991). "Hupehsuchus, an enigmatic aquatic reptile from the Triassic of China, and the problem of establishing relationships". Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences. 331 (1260): 131–153.
Chen, X. H.; Motani, R.; Cheng, L.; Jiang, D. Y.; Rieppel, O. (2014). "A Carapace-Like Bony 'Body Tube' in an Early Triassic Marine Reptile and the Onset of Marine Tetrapod Predation". PLoS ONE. 9 (4): e94396.
Chen X. H., Motani, R., Cheng, L., Jiang, D. Y., Rieppel, O. (2014) “The Enigmatic Marine Reptile Nanchangosaurus from the Lower Triassic of Hubei, China and the Phylogenetic Affinities of Hupehsuchia”. PLoS ONE 9(7): e102361.
Chen, Xiao-hong; Motani, Ryosuke; Cheng, Long; Jiang, Da-yong; Rieppel, Olivier (May 27, 2015). "A New Specimen of Carroll's Mystery Hupehsuchian from the Lower Triassic of China". PLoS ONE. 10 (5): e0126024.
Cheng, L., Motani, R., Jiang, D.Y., Yan, C.B., Tintori, A. and Rieppel, O., (2019). “Early Triassic marine reptile representing the oldest record of unusually small eyes in reptiles indicating non-visual prey detection”. Scientific reports, 9(1), p.152.
Motani, R., Chen, X. H., Jiang, D. Y., Cheng, L., Tintori, A., Rieppel, O. (2015). “Lunge feeding in early marine reptiles and fast evolution of marine tetrapod feeding guilds”. Scientific reports. 5: 8900.
Wu, X.-C.; Li, Z.; Zhou, B.-C.; Dong, Z.-M. (2003). "A polydactylous amniote from the Triassic period". Nature. 426 (6966): 516.
Xiao-hong Chen; Ryosuke Motani; Long Cheng; Da-yong Jiang & Olivier Rieppel (2014). "A Small Short-Necked Hupehsuchian from the Lower Triassic of Hubei Province, China". PLoS ONE. 9 (12): e115244.
Xiao-hong Chen; Ryosuke Motani; Long Cheng; Da-yong Jiang; Olivier Rieppel (May 27, 2015). "A New Specimen of Carroll's Mystery Hupehsuchian from the Lower Triassic of China". PLoS ONE. 10 (5): e0126024.
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grabsomeironmeat · 3 years
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Keichousaurus
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ukge · 4 years
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keichousaurus sculpture https://ift.tt/30KhuYf
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mablox · 5 years
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Keichousaurus. Dinosaurland Fossil Museum, Dorset. 2018. #palaeontology #fossils #triassicperiod #sauropterygian #lizards #lizardsofinstagram #naturalhistory #naturalhistorymuseum #dinosaurlandfossilmuseum #dorset https://www.instagram.com/p/B0jgA1tJVgZ/?igshid=gse8m7wkksrk
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jurassicsunsets · 7 years
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There is evidence nothosaurs gave live birth, they didn't lay eggs.
So you are right! Keichousaurus seems to have borne live young.
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sciencetoastudent · 7 years
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Keichousaurus at the North American Museum of Ancient Life. #paleontology #fossil #biology #zoology #science #usofscience #animals #animal #marinebiology #fossils #utah #saltlakecity (at Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point)
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Keichousaurus Hui Fossil At ObjetsD’Art , www.objetsdartcorpuschristi.com (at OBJETS D ART) https://www.instagram.com/p/B1mN78iHWim/?igshid=15ryrc3ow7uhn
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geminibullworld · 5 years
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Prehistoric Information- Keichousaurus
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nanotopian · 7 years
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Look! A real dinosaur fossil!! Little Keichousaurus from the Triassic period. Thanks to Dr Beth Halfkenny for bringing it out to show us #petrographic #microscopy #dinosaur #real #fossil #china #triassic #artayatana #air (at Carleton University (Official))
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wtf-triassic · 4 years
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Thoracopterus
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By @evolution-incarnate
Etymology: Chest wings
First Described By: Bronn, 1858
Classification: Biota, Archaea, Proteoarchaeota, Asgardarchaeota, Eukaryota, Neokaryota, Scotokaryota, Opimoda, Podiata, Amorphea, Obazoa, Opisthokonta, Holozoa, Filozoa, Choanozoa, Animalia, Eumetazoa, Parahoxozoa, Bilateria, Nephrozoa, Deuterostomia, Chordata, Olfactores, Vertebrata, Craniata, Gnathostomata, Eugnathostomata, Osteichthyes, Actinopterygii, Peltopleuriformes, Thoracopteridae
Referred Species: T. niederristi, T. magnificus, T. martinsi, T. wushaensis
Status: Extinct 
Time and Place: 242 to 209 Ma, from the Ladinian of the Middle Triassic to the Norian of the Late Triassic.
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Thoracopterus is known from Italy, Austria, and China.
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Physical Description: Thoracopterus is one of the earliest known flying fish. Not a flying fish as in the modern group of flying fish (Exocoetidae), but a fish that flies. Thoracopterus’s pectoral and pelvic fins were greatly expanded into wings. The pectoral wings were almost as long as the rest of the fish! These would have given these fish the ability to glide over the water surface. Besides the wings, Thoracopterus would have looked like an unremarkable fish. Its head was short-snouted and had large eyes, its dorsal fin was placed very far back on the body, and the lower lobe of the caudal fin was longer than the upper one.
Diet: Thoracopterus likely fed on smaller animals, which given how large it was (10 cm at most), would have probably been mostly plankton.
Behavior: It is presumed that thoracopterid behavior was very similar to those of modern flying fish. When threatened by predators, Thoracopterus would likely swim particularly fast to break free from the water surface. When in the air, it would fan out its fins to glide in the air for a considerable distance (modern flying fish can glide for up to 45 seconds), hopefully evading the predator. Jumping is also used during spawning displays in modern flying fish, so this may have also been the case for Thoracopterus. As a small pelagic fish, Thoracopterus likely lived in schools - small pelagic fish tend to do that, because that reduces the chance each individual has of being eaten.
Ecosystem: Thoracopterus fossils are found in Europe and China, which… is the case for a lot of Triassic marine animals, actually. Each environment was pelagic, but probably not too far out from the shore. In Europe, Thoracopterus lived alongside a variety of other fish, such as Belonorhynchus, Saurichthys, Graphiurichthys, Paralepidotus, Peltopleurus, and Pholidopleurus, as well as decapod crustaceans. In China, Thoracopterus lived alongside ammonites like Ptychites and Detoniceras and early marine reptiles, such as the thalattosaur Xinpusaurus and the nothosaur Keichousaurus.
Other: The taxonomy of thoracopterids is a bit of a mess. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that T. martinsi, T. magnificus and T. wushaensis may be more closely related to Gigantopterus and Potanichthys than to the type species of Thoracopterus, T. niederristi. However, it has also been suggested that Potanichthys is the same species as the earlier-named T. wushaensis, so then that becomes Thoracopterus and only Gigantopterus stands out. Or you could lump them all, including Gigantopterus, into Thoracopterus. It really depends on where you set your genericometer. For the purposes of this article, I have described Thoracopterus sensu lato.
~ By Henry Thomas
Sources under the cut
BBC 2008. Fast flying fish glides by ferry. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7410421.stm
Tintori, A., Sassi, D. 1992. Thoracopterus Bronn (Osteichthyes: Actinopterygii):  A gliding fish from the Upper Triassic of Europe. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 12(3): 265-283.
Tintori, A., Hitij, T., Jiang, D., Lombardo, C., Sun, Z. 2013. Triassic actinopterygian fishes: the recovery after the end-Permian crisis. Integrative Zoology 9(4): 394-411.
Tintori, A. 2015. Setting the record straight for fossil flying fishes versus non-flying ones: a comment on Xu et al. (2015). Biology Letters 11(11).
Xu, G., Zhao, L., Gao, K., Wu, F. 2013. A new stem-neopterygian fish from the Middle Triassic of China shows the earliest over-water gliding strategy of the vertebrates. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 280: 20122261.
Xu, G., Zhao, L., Shen, C. 2015. A Middle Triassic thoracopterid from China highlights the evolutionary origin of overwater gliding in early ray-finned fishes. Biology Letters 11(1).
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ukge · 4 years
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keichousaurus sculpture https://ift.tt/2XQ7CKN
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