Jan 17, 2025
Pectoral limbs of a Platecarpus sp., Ichthyosaurus conybeari, and Ichthyosaurus intermedius from A Guide to the Fossil Reptiles and Fishes in the Department of Geology and Paleontology in the British Museum (Natural History), 1896.
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Pectoral limbs of a Platecarpus sp., Ichthyosaurus conybeari, and Ichthyosaurus intermedius from A Guide to the Fossil Reptiles and Fishes in the Department of Geology and Paleontology in the British Museum (Natural History), 1896.
Happy World Lizard Day 2020 (yes, I'm late). Anyway, here's Aigialosaurus dalmaticus ("seashore lizard of Dalmatia"), a basal, semi-aquatic mosasauroid that lived in what's now Hvar Island, Croatia, about 99 - 94 million years ago (Late Cretaceous).
As its name suggests, Aigialosaurus was a semi-aquatic lizard that might've strongly resembled a salvator monitor in morphology. It still possesses primitive traits such as limbs with functional digits, nostrils that are close to the tip of the snout, and less-developed or probably lack of caudal fin.
It grew to only about 1.1 metres long, just a bit larger than the smallest mosasauroid, Dallasaurus. Well, after all, everyone always start from a humble origin.