Monday, April 24, 2017

Marine Snouters of the Triassic

The holotype of Thalattosaurus
When I started this humble blog in (dear lord) late 2014, I did not intend for it to becomes a blog dedicated to Triassic hellasaurs, but here we are. The more I read about the Triassic, the weirder it gets. For example, it seems like half of the reptiles alive during the Late Triassic were marine or at least semi-aquatic. We’re already covered hupehsuchians (twice) and those wonderful but woefully obscure saurosphargids. There was that recent post about underappreciated vancleaveans. Placodonts will come later and will probably spread across several posts—it was a big group. Today we’ll be talking about a diverse, well-known family of Triassic marine reptiles that still aren't well-known outside the paleo community: thalattosaurs.