A bizarre former marine reptile was officially identified – decades after the discovery of its fossils in Canada for the first time.
The 12 -meter creature, Traskasaura Sandraewas a long neck plesiosaur – a type of predator who lived alongside the dinosaurs – With a bizarre anatomy and a rare descending hunting style.
“The fact that he had very strange features – it was a very strange animal – made the task fundamentally impossible for researchers at the time to decide what he was and who he was linked”, ” Prof FF Robin O’Keefepaleontologist at Marshall University and the main author of the study, said BBC Science Focus.
The first fossil was discovered in 1988 along the Puntledge river on the island of Vancouver, after being lying in the ground for 85 million years. It was surprisingly complete – skull, neck, limbs and tail – but degraded on one side. “He looked closely,” said O’Keefe, “but the closer you get, the more sad he became – like a melted ice. It made him almost impossible to identify.”
It was not until a second, the juvenile skeleton was determined that things were starting to set up.
“It was really well preserved, and it allowed us to verify some of the strange features of the adult fossil to give meaning to what we saw,” said O’Keefe. “It was the addition of this second skeleton that made it possible to attribute this thing to a new species.”
Among its many oddities, there is its shoulder structure, which opens upward – unlike any other known Plesiosaur.
Its fins, on the other hand, have the shape of inverted aircraft wings, with the more curved surface on the underside rather than the top. “It helped accentuate the advanced editing when it dived,” said O’Keefe.
It is significant because it suggests Traskasaura Chased in a very unusual way: by diving on its prey from above.
“If you think of the reptiles that swim in water, light always comes from above, so animals tend to hunt upwards because they look at Silhouettée prey against light on the surface,” said O’Keefe. “This animal did not do that.”
His prey probably included ammonites – rolled parents extinguished and rolled up with modern calmars and octopuses – which he would have crushed with his heavy and sharp teeth.
Despite its threatening size and terrifying appearance, Traskasaura was in no way the predator Apex of the old oceans. “It was big, but he didn’t have a very big neck or head,” said O’Keefe. “So, if a mosasaur who has big teeth obtained it, it could really have torn it.”
Always, Traskasaura We probably passed a good time, with an abundance of food in the ocean at the time. But it was not to last. Like all plesiosaurs, the species encountered its end to mass extinction approximately 66 million years ago.
“They were doing very well, the ecosystem was relatively healthy, then an asteroid strikes and kills all the big animals,” said O’Keefe.
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About our expert
F. Robin O’Keefe obtained his baccalaureate in biology of honors from the University of Stanford in 1992 and his doctorate. In evolutionary biology of the University of Chicago in 2000. He has held a professor at Marshall University in Virginia-Western since 2006, where he taught more than two thousand undergraduate students in courses ranging from human anatomy to comparative zoology and the history of the earth.
Recognized expert on the marine reptiles of the age of dinosaurs, O’Keefe received the Drinko distinction scholarship 2013 for his work on the reproduction of Plesiosaure.