#pliosaur

[bobnichollsart]

It's Fossil Friday!

Here are some zooms into my "Deep Blue Buffet" painting (Part 1), commissioned by The Etches Collection. It features a bunch of species from the Late Jurassic Kimmeridge Clay: a dead sauropod, "The Sea Rex" (probably Pliosaurus), Hybodus, Hypsocormus, Metriorhynchus, Aspidorhynchus, and lots of Allothrissops.

[paleofabs]

A little bit late but yesterday Sir David Attenborough had his 100th birthday! So I drew one of many animals named after him.

Here you have Attenborosaurus catching himself a meal :D

[ppaleoartistgallery]

#Paleostream 25/04/2026

his week's #Paleostream flocking was themed around the Walking With series of palaeontology documentaries to honour the last Ben Bartlett who passed yesterday

we sketched Ornithocheirus, Brontoscorpio, Liopleurodon, and Koolasuchus

[adikavita]

Approximately 190 million years ago, a great float of Attenborosaurus swiftly navigate their pelagic environment in their hunt for fish. - Attenborosaurus is an extinct and mainly piscivorous marine reptile that existed during the early Jurassic. It is a comparatively primitive pliosaurid, closer related to the short-necked plesiosaurian marine reptiles than actual plesiosaurs. Originally, the holotype specimen was thought to be a plesiosaur in 1881, but was assigned to the Attenborosaurus genus by Robert T. Bakker in 1993, thus becoming its type species- A. conybeari. -

The original remains of the holotype specimen were bombed and destroyed during World War II, with the only remaining insight into this animal coming from the cast made by William Johnson Sollas. - 'Attenborosaurus' is named after and in honor of Sir David Attenborough, who turned 99 earlier this month.

[alphynix]

Megacephalosaurus eulerti was a one of the last of the pliosaurs – a group of short-necked big-headed plesiosaurs – living during the Late Cretaceous (~93 million years ago) in what is now the Midwestern United States, a region that at that time was covered by the Western Interior Seaway.

Although known only from fossil skulls and a few neck bones, based on the proportions of related pliosaurs it probably reached around 9m long (~30') with its 1.75m (~5'9") head alone making up 20-25% of that measurement.

Its elongated jaws were lined with pointed conical teeth, and pits in the bones of its snout may have housed a complex sensory system, possibly giving it the ability to detect the movements or even bioelectric fields of nearby prey.

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References:

Foffa, Davide, et al. "Complex rostral neurovascular system in a giant pliosaur." Naturwissenschaften 101 (2014): 453-456. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-014-1173-3

Madzia, Daniel, Sven Sachs, and Johan Lindgren. "Morphological and phylogenetic aspects of the dentition of Megacephalosaurus eulerti, a pliosaurid from the Turonian of Kansas, USA, with remarks on the cranial anatomy of the taxon." Geological Magazine 156.7 (2019): 1201-1216. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0016756818000523

Schumacher, Bruce A., Kenneth Carpenter, and Michael J. Everhart. "A new cretaceous pliosaurid (reptilia, plesiosauria) from the carlile shale (middle turonian) of russell county, kansas." Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 33.3 (2013): 613-628. https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2013.722576

Wikipedia contributors. “Megacephalosaurus” Wikipedia, 30 Mar. 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacephalosaurus

[makairodonx]

Sketches I’ve made of various Jurassic fauna, from bottom to top: Camarasaurus, Dimorphodon, Pterodactylus, Liopleurodon, Stegosaurus and Allosaurus. As a paleontology enthusiast since childhood, I consider the Jurassic to be my favorite period of the Mesozoic Era, since it’s called “The Golden Age of Dinosaurs” for being the heyday of not only the dinosaurs but also the pterosaurs and some of the most spectacular marine reptiles and fish ever to swim the earth’s oceans, and for boasting some of the coolest animals of the entire Mesozoic era overall, even when much of 2020s paleomedia skips it completely in favor of the more popular animals of the Late Cretaceous or the Pleistocene.

[mr-viwick]

subjecting you to my dark and twisted thoughts (making mosasaurs and pliosaurs act like seals)

[thylacines-toybox]

Set of mini prehistoric marine animal figures by CollectA, bought from a local toy shop in July 2024. I enjoy the several different shapes of ammonite here!