Cyamodus
| Cyamodus | ||||||||||||
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Cyamodus fossil |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Middle Triassic to Carnian (Upper Triassic) | ||||||||||||
| 245.9 to 216.5 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Cyamodus | ||||||||||||
| von Meyer , 1863 | ||||||||||||
| species | ||||||||||||
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Cyamodus is a fossil genus of aquatic reptiles from the Middle Triassic (over 200 million years ago). Five types have been described so far.
features
The representatives of Cyamodus were about 1.3 meters long. Their bodies were flat and heavily armored, much like today's turtles . Their tank, however, was in two parts. The greater part protected him from the neck to the hips, as well as almost all of the fins. The smaller, second shell covered the hips and the base of the tail. The Cyamodus species were believed to be slow swimmers. The armor protected them from hunters like the nothosaurs .
Her skull was heart-shaped and broad. Their flat "cobblestone-like" teeth are interpreted as adapting to the diet of hard-shelled marine animals (durophagia).
Live reconstruction
C. rostratus skull
Underside of a C. hildegardis skull
Find history
The type specimen of Cyamodus was discovered in Germany in the early 19th century and described and named by Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer in 1863 . Another important site is Monte San Giorgio in the south of Switzerland on the border with Italy.
literature
- Bernhard Peyer : The Triassic Fauna of the Ticino Limestone Alps. Volume 3: Placodontia (= treatises of the Swiss Palaeontological Society. Vol. 51, No. 5, ZDB -ID 210042-3 ). Birkhäuser, Basel 1931.
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