#pangea+

[animentality]

[cosmonautroger]

Pangea

[makesomenoise]

Our tectonic plates have just been moving in different directions lately...

[emptyjunior]

Missing Pangea like you miss an ex, Tibet do you still think about me. We used to be neighbours you know

[derived-centrosaur]

Spec-Dinovember Day 5: Deep One, a marine reptile adapted for deep dives

The Triassic saw the proliferation of many lineages of strange creatures filling novel niches. Amongst these were a host of reptiles dipping their toes into the realm of marine adaptations. While Ichthyosaurs and to a lesser extent Nothosaurs and Placodonts would see wide successes, others like Helveticosaurus would remain minor players. In response to the increasing competition from these larger groups, a lineage of Helveticosaurs would begin adapting to forage in the twilight zone of the midwater, where fish stocks were less hunted. By the Late-Triassic the pinnacle of this trend is Helveticotitan miroungiformis. At an average of 3 and a half tons they dwarf their ancestors by an order of magnitude. Their great bulk insulates them from the frigid temperatures of the deep water, as well as lends them a significant amount of thermal inertia via gigantothermy. The extra mass gives them both greater muscle mass and greater blood volume with which to store oxygen in the extra myoglobin and hemoglobin, allowing prolonged dive times, further enhanced by their reptilian metabolism and it's low oxygen consumption rate. These reptiles lack a whale's echolocation ability, or a shark's electroreception, or even a seal's sensitive whiskers, instead they hunt their prey by sight alone. In the twilight zone there is very little light, but a faint glow does trickle down, and thus prey can be sighted from below by their shadow against this light. As such, Helveticotitan hunt by swimming upside-down and looking for the shadows of fish and cephalopods above. To facilitate this, their skulls are broad across the top and the jaws are narrow, allowing the eyes to see 'downward' in binocular. This unconventional swimming posture has also led to their uncommon color pattern of reverse counter-shading.

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This was initially a prompt I wasn't thrilled about, but as I worked I warmed up to it considerably. It was pretty cool looking into what adaptations extant animals have for deep-diving, especially because like, half of them are just 'get huge' and some biochemistry quirk that works better because you're bigger. Plus, apparently sperm whales will hunt by swimming upside down and just looking for shadows despite having that massive echolocating melon apparently, which I found amusing and gave me an easy solution for how these reptiles find food. I got quite carried away on the sketch, bit of a painting now, and it definitely ate up more time budget than it should have, but it was fun so it's fine!

[thegirlinprague]

inspired by 🦭

[vintage-tigre]

[quikyu]

Giratina (With Terapagos for scale)