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sm-forrester — Dinner at the edge of the Abyss
#animals #fish #mosasaur #paleoart #prehistoric #platecarpus #gillicus #killme #notadinosaur
Published: 2017-12-08 18:25:06 +0000 UTC; Views: 1803; Favourites: 80; Downloads: 0
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me, at 7pm: hmm, I have nothing to do, let me just satisfy this idea of a drawing I've had for while with a nice *quick* sketch...me now, at 2:20am the next day: 🙃 🙃 🙃
feat;
Platecarpus tympaniticus
an unlucky Gillicus arcuatus
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Comments: 17
One little nitpick of mine: fossil evidence points to Platecarpus specifically having banded flippers, as well as amber eyes. Yup, a color study was done on this guy!
also I have the pleasure of seeing the actual fossil
which is complete, and also has skin impressions
and a preserved trachea
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COLOR STUDY??? WHEEEN???? I mean the only mosasaur color study I know of was the one involving a leatherback turtle, Stenopterygius and Tylosaurus nepaeolicus...so...I am not familiar with the Platecarpus one
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Thank you very much!
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i actually wonder, do we know how deep mosasaurs could dive?
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There's actually an upcoming paper working on trying to figure out the diving depths of various mosasaur taxa
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IIRC, normally mosasaurs were more surface predators, but they did have the ability to go just above/into the area of the sea where sunlight just can't penetrate (Aphotic zone: about 200m below sea level.). Hunting a few metres above the aphotic zone, with a rather limited amount of sunlight reaching the water, would be easier as the animal is concealed by shadows. That's the depth of the Platecarpus and Gillicus are in this picture. I don't know what depth would actually seriously harm them however, but they probably wouldn't even go near it seeing they liked the shallows much better.
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ok so they were shallow sea goers but they had the ability to dive a little bit
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Exactly, just like modern bottlenose dolphins
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i was going to say like whale sharks, i think those aren't deep sea
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Yeah, whale sharks feed up near the surface
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