Platecarpus

Platecarpus
	Platecarpus
Temporal occurrence
	Upper Cretaceous ( Cenomanium to Campanium )
	100.5 to 72 million years
Locations
	Europe; North America (Kansas, Alabama); Africa ( Angola ); New Zealand;
Systematics
	Toxicofera
	Sneaky (Anguimorpha)
	Mosasauroidea
	Mosasaur (Mosasauridae)
	Plioplatecarpinae
	Platecarpus
Scientific name
	Platecarpus
	Cope , 1869

Platecarpus is a genus of medium-sized mosasaurs from the Upper Cretaceous period .

features

Skull of Platecarpus in the Peabody Museum of Natural History

The animals were about seven meters long and had a highly mobile skull with relatively small and slender teeth that showed a round cross-section. With the exception of the skull, the skeleton was very unspecialized. The body was relatively stocky, the fins wide. At its end, like the ichthyosaurs , the tail had a large hypocerke caudal fin with a large lower and a small upper lobe, which was supported by the downwardly bent spine.

Way of life

The animals probably ate small fish and belemnites . Fish scales are fossilized as stomach contents.

It is controversial whether Platecarpus was an inhabitant of shallow waters or dived very deep. Porous bones, documented by many fossils, have been interpreted as necrotic and a consequence of decompression sickness . It was later found that the bone microstructure of the ribs may have been related to life in shallow water.

species

Platecarpus tympaniticus Cope, 1869 type species
Platecarpus coryphaeus (Cope 1872)
Platecarpus ictericus (Cope 1871), from the Niobrara Formation (Kansas)
Platecarpus planifrons (Cope 1874)
Platecarpus bocagei (Antunes 1964), Angola, earliest form of Platecarpus

literature

Richard Ellis: Sea Dragons. Predators of the Prehistoric Oceans. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence KS 2003, ISBN 0-7006-1269-6 .

Individual evidence

^ Johan Lindgren, Michael W. Caldwell, Takuya Konishi, Luis M. Chiappe , Andrew Allen Farke: Convergent Evolution in Aquatic Tetrapods: Insights from an Exceptional Fossil Mosasaur. In: PLoS ONE . Vol. 5, No. 8, 2010, e11998, doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0011998 .

Web links

Commons : Platecarpus - collection of images, videos and audio files

Ben Creisler: Mosasauridae Translation and Pronunciation Guide Platecarpus

[Lindgren_et_al.-1] Johan Lindgren, Michael W. Caldwell, Takuya Konishi, Luis M. Chiappe , Andrew Allen Farke: Convergent Evolution in Aquatic Tetrapods: Insights from an Exceptional Fossil Mosasaur. In: PLoS ONE . Vol. 5, No. 8, 2010, e11998, doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0011998 .