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Inspired by this post , by IllustratedMenagerie

100 million years in the future. Long gone are the whales and the dolphins, the seals and the penguins. The oceans of this time are dominated by a different guild of animals: snakes. Their finless anatomy and undulating swimming motion may limit most of them from becoming pelagic, except for a unique group called the Cetoophidians, also called the "whale snakes". More compact bodies, and a dorsal and caudal fin made of cartilage makes them more hydodynamic, as well as lending them a superficially shark- or ichthyosaur-like appearance. Perhaps their most notable innovation are the pair of “fins” on the sides, which are actually heavily enlarged ribs. Being mostly cartilage, they are flexible, but are otherwise not very mobile, being more akin to the fins of a shark than to a cetacean’s.

The colossal sharksnake is the largest of them all: an apex predator of smaller cetoophidians and large fish. It hunts near the surface, tracking their prey by scent using their tongue, and then by sight. Like their predecessors, it is unable to chew, but it retains an expansive maw that allows it to swallow whole prey apparently too big for it.

Description

Inspired by this post , by IllustratedMenagerie

100 million years in the future. Long gone are the whales and the dolphins, the seals and the penguins. The oceans of this time are dominated by a different guild of animals: snakes. Their finless anatomy and undulating swimming motion may limit most of them from becoming pelagic, except for a unique group called the Cetoophidians, also called the "whale snakes". More compact bodies, and a dorsal and caudal fin made of cartilage makes them more hydodynamic, as well as lending them a superficially shark- or ichthyosaur-like appearance. Perhaps their most notable innovation are the pair of “fins” on the sides, which are actually heavily enlarged ribs. Being mostly cartilage, they are flexible, but are otherwise not very mobile, being more akin to the fins of a shark than to a cetacean’s.

The colossal sharksnake is the largest of them all: an apex predator of smaller cetoophidians and large fish. It hunts near the surface, tracking their prey by scent using their tongue, and then by sight. Like their predecessors, it is unable to chew, but it retains an expansive maw that allows it to swallow whole prey apparently too big for it.