Prehistoric Breakdown: Vancleavea
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 ก.ค. 2024
- The Triassic is full of strange creatures that look like nothing that has come since, and in the shallow waters lived one of the strangest of all.
Today we breakdown an creature that just gets stranger the more you learn about it, Vancleavea.
00:00 Narrative
06:27 Breakdown - บันเทิง
One small and peculiar difference between this animal and all archosaurs is a small bone that fits in between the left and right nasals, which make up the snout. This bone is so unique that it refer to as a "neomorphic bone" which means new shape bone. Not only is this new bone one of a kind in nature, it is also one of a kind within each Vancleavea. Typically, bones will have a left and right mirror in any given animal; for example, most people have a left and right leg, which is made up of a left and right femur, left and right tibia, and so on. Not so for the "neomorphic bone", which sits alone and unpaired right along the line of symmetry in Vancleavea's skull. This bone has not been found in any other animal before, living or extinct, showing that Vancleavea was truly unique.
What a great creature to cover Raptor Rex, thank you for bringing it to my attention! The evolutionary convergences, diversity and bizarreness of reptiles in between two mass extinctions are why the Triassic is one of my favorite time periods!
Vanclevea itself reminds me of a cross between a crocdile and an otter, having the armored scaly hide, short sprawling webbed limbs, and vertically flattened tail like a croc, but the elongated body, compact but robust skull and large canine-like teeth like an otter. Its anatomy presumable gives it great maneuverability and bursts of speed in murky, shallow water at the cost of prolonged speed in deep, clear, and open water, making it well suited for fresh bodies and waterways with more woody or rocky debris. Its body plan seem to indicate it is an agile pursuit predator, actively chasing after small, fast prey. its skull shape and dentition seem well suited for an opportunistic diet, with its long, pointy and interlocking front teeth being well suited for catching softer-bodied fish or amphibians. It could use its smaller and more serrated back teeth, combined with its bite force, to mash its prey up before swallowing. Its strong jaws may also take prey with tougher hides, such as crayfish, crabs, snails, bivalves or aquatic insects. Though even its teeth don't seem to be specialized for cracking shells, so it probably didn't eat anything too hard. Anyway, this Otter-croc is surely one of a kind.
What a neat creature! Thank you for sharing.
Ottersuchus magnifica
Like a test version of a otter
YOU THE BEST!
Triassic weirdness is a meme at this point. I love it.
I think a hypothetical common name would be a wolf gator. Maybe a tiger croc if it was striped.
I think it was a generalist with a noticeable, but far from onerous, tendency towards a specialization. The head shape and dentition gives me strong specialized vibes but at the same time, don't seem limiting .Think housecats and raccoons. Housecats are generalists with a strong tendency towards rodents, but can easily survive without them. Same thing with raccoons, they are swamp specialists but are so generalized and competitive that they range far outside of swamps.
Best guess is they are specialized towards smaller armored fish and perhaps armored land animals. But instead of crushing armor with enormous molars, the strategy is penetration with large canine teeth. Unlike large molars, big canines are still useful with catching unarmored prey with few disadvantages.
If my guess is true, then the space between the front and rear pairs, and/or the distance between the left and right of each pair, of canines should have a similar distribution to the size of it's primary prey's cervical vertebrae, osteoderms, scapula, scales, etc.
The Triassic Age was weird, true and freaky. The Permian Period is the only thing that tops because the lines between the various animals were so blurred it wasn't even funny.
Ох уж эта Vancleavea. Странная рептилия по строению тела, голова и образом жизни с морфологией. Но твой рассказ довольно хорош. Ты покозал небольшую, но всё же хорошую фауну тех времён. Так держать.
Слушай, а как на счёт того чтоб ты снял ролик про суминию. Я недавно видел как один парень сделал целую 3D модель этого существа.
Attack of the angry pool noodle
This thing looks like a middle evolution in pokemon
Never heard of it, wonderful looking fossil, enjoyed the story, mate. Been a while. Was Vancleavea a Sinapsid ??????
….no. not at all.
I 2d modeled that thing for a perian game. It was gonna be a triassic game pass.
Do one of the suspected turtle ancestors like Eunotosaurus
Please do pycnonemosaurus
This is new 2 me. I thought it was some small prehistoric amphibian
I was VERY wrong.
How was vanclevia _not_ a synapsid based on skull morphology? 🤔
I asked the same thing.
The Triassic has become my fav. geologic period. You couldn't swing a dead cat anywhere in the Triassic without hitting something weird