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#kronosaurus #elasmosauridae #leivanectes #animal #aquatic #colombian #cretaceous #digitalart #digitaldrawing #digitalillustration #digitalpainting #elasmosaur #leviathan #marine #marinereptile #mesozoic #ocean #paleoart #paleontology #plesiosaur #pliosaur #pterosaur #reptile #splash #anhanguera #paleoillustration #pliosauridae #plesiosauroidea #sachicasaurus
Published: 2022-04-03 00:11:00 +0000 UTC; Views: 27574; Favourites: 238; Downloads: 10
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Description
As it swims through a (comparatively) shallow stretch of sea, 125 million years ago during the early Cretaceous period of what is now the Paja Formation in Colombia, a 8-meter long Leivanectes bernardoi gets ambushed from below by an oceanic predator much bigger than itself. While elasmosaurid plesiosaurs like the long-necked Leivanectes are indeed large animals, these oceans have animals larger than this plesiosaur. A giant, 10-meter long pliosaur, Sachicasaurus vitae swimming below spots the silhouette of the plesiosaur and leaps from the water with the reptile's neck in its jaws.Now that April Fools Day is over I should probably clarify that this drawing here was made as an April Fools joke and that neither Nencatacoa nor a 17-meter pliosaur have been found in the Paja Formation, or anywhere for that matter. The former is just a fake sauropod I made up because I thought it would be a neat trick and the latter was WDGHK 's idea and we were both in on this 'giant pliosaur joke'. However I decided that what I had drew was not a bad Sachicasaurus and kinda wanted to have it used not just for a prank but also some more serious paleoart. So I also drew this version in which I replaced my fake dinosaur with a real elasmosaurid as the prey animal and managed to recycle it into this (and flipped it into a mirror image because I just felt like it).
With my joke image recycled, the pliosaur in the drawing is now a normal Sachicasaurus vitae, a 10-meter predatory marine reptile, rather than a ridiculously huge one the size of a sperm whale. Even at its real size, this animal is one of the largest known pliosaurs, and while the one known fossil specimen has been suggested to only be a subadult, this claim has since been put into doubt (and even if it still had growing to do it wouldn't have 7 whole meters left to grow). With a massive head and jaws over 2 meters long and filled with sharp teeth, Sachicasaurus was a formidable predator capable of hunting quite much all the other known marine animals of the Paja Formation, in fact it is so far one of the largest known marine animals of the formation along with Monquirasaurus (another huge pliosaur), and its prey likely included smaller pliosaurs, turtles, ichthyosaurs and elasmosaurid plesiosaurs like the one pictured in its jaws.
Described in 2019, Leivanectes is a species of plesiosaur in the elasmosauridae family, and one of two elasmosaurids known from the Paja Formation of Colombia (the other being Callawayasaurus). Like other elasmosaurids, this species would have had a very long neck making up around half its length and tipped with a small skull filled with sharp teeth it used to snag fish and squid. Said neck of this species has not been found though and we simply infer this from related animals, as currently the only known material of this marine reptile is a partial skull. Maybe snapped off the rest of the body by pliosaur jaws, but we can only speculative if this is indeed the case and there isn't actual evidence of this occurring. There is evidence that other elasmosaurids were prey to contemporary large pliosaurs as fossils of the Australian elasmosaurid Eromangasaurus (how unfortunately named huh) show bite marks from the pliosaur Kronosaurus (or rather Eiectus after the 2021 taxonomic revision), so it is plausible that Leivanectes was preyed upon by the large pliosaurs of its own ecosystem.
Pterosaurs flying around are Anhanguera blittersdorffi, not known from Colombia but they did live in this time period in Brazil so it seemed plausible to think these seabird analogies could be more widespread and soar into other nearby seas.
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WildbugWarrior1545 [2023-05-10 23:30:33 +0000 UTC]
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Olmagon In reply to WildbugWarrior1545 [2023-05-11 07:50:21 +0000 UTC]
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