Seriously bizarre sea reptile found

Adam Khor

http://qilong.wordpress.com/2014/02/01/im-not-sure-that-name-is-appropriate/

Yet to be officially described. This is alien-level weirdness.

sawdoubters

looks like alligator or crocodile

Adam Khor

I don´t know what sort of crocs you've been frequenting :pac:

Galvasean

Just when you think palaeontology can't surprise you anymore...

bogwalrus

Galvasean wrote: »

Just when you think palaeontology can't surprise you anymore...

Could it be that this once roamed the land and then went to the sea and it's mouth evolved to be sideways as this was making the best use of it underwater. It just looks like a sideways mouth of a raptor.

Mickeroo

Is that a baleen plate?

Adam Khor

bogwalrus wrote: »

Could it be that this once roamed the land and then went to the sea and it's mouth evolved to be sideways as this was making the best use of it underwater. It just looks like a sideways mouth of a raptor.

It's not really a sideways mouth; apparently the two "halves" of the upper jaw were fixed, so it was probably filtering food through the toothed "cleft", or perhaps somehow using the lower jaw to grind food against the upper teeth...

Mickeroo wrote: »

Is that a baleen plate?

They're real teeth I think

Kess73

Mickeroo wrote: »

Is that a baleen plate?

Thought something similar at first glance. Certainly looks like some sort of filter system.

bogwalrus

What sort of food would these guys have eaten? Large sea species like whales eat plankton. Could this species be a transitional one where it used to eat other fish so its teeth were slowly being evolved into a different function. I'm always curious about species that change direction and what happens to the tools (such as teeth) when they no longer need them. Obviously a repurposing would be in order like a filter or similar in the above case. For humans we still have that apendix thing but that is internal. I don't really know many species that have external features that are completely useless now but once were quite functional.

Adam Khor

bogwalrus wrote: »

What sort of food would these guys have eaten? Large sea species like whales eat plankton. Could this species be a transitional one where it used to eat other fish so its teeth were slowly being evolved into a different function. I'm always curious about species that change direction and what happens to the tools (such as teeth) when they no longer need them. Obviously a repurposing would be in order like a filter or similar in the above case. For humans we still have that apendix thing but that is internal. I don't really know many species that have external features that are completely useless now but once were quite functional.

I think the blue shark is such a species- it is first and foremost a meat eater, feeding on fish, squid, carrion etc, but its gills actually filter plankton too, because it lives in the open sea where food can be hard to find so any protein is welcome... but Atopodentatus doesn´t look like an open-sea dweller, so maybe it was evolving into a filter feeder to avoid competition with other similar reptiles?

How about it being a bottom-feeder, using its practically vertical jaws to comb the sea bottom and expelling the mud/water through the cleft on the upper jaw while holding the small animals it caught with the numerous teeth?

PS- Just realized that in one of the above posts I said it maybe used its jaws to grind people... I meant food XD There's something really wrong with me...

Rubecula

Maybe (just a thought) but it may not have been able to swallow food underwater and evolved it's mouth to eat while at sea?

Galvasean

Adam Khor wrote: »

PS- Just realized that in one of the above posts I said it maybe used its jaws to grind people... I meant food XD There's something really wrong with me...

Mmmm.... people....