Extinct Creatures-- Atopodentatus unicus
Added 2017-09-01 13:00:49 +0000 UTCToday's Triassic Weirdo turned out pretty cute! Atopodentatus unicus, which translates to basically "unique and its teeth make me uncomfortable", was an herbivorous marine reptile from the early Triassic. If you look at its current reconstruction, it's not all that odd-- we've already talked about another shovel-mouthed herbivore, Nigersaurus, and it's not an uncommon head-shape to come across.
The reason why its name focuses so much on the mouth is because the first Atopodentatus fossil was pretty squished, causing the mouth to look more like some weird forward-facing zipper of teeth, as shown above. So for a while it was portrayed as some extremely creepy-looking heckbeast, and only recently was the mistake discovered and the creature given a much more sensible mouth.
Also whoops, I realized I forgot to draw a scale comparison for this guy (which is too bad, I could have had some mermaid in there or something, it would have been good jokes), but they're about 10 feet long!
Comments
It's so pretty on that rock! Like Ariel.
Betsy Lang
2017-09-01 13:36:10 +0000 UTCHow many dinosaurs are entirely based off one fossil? I guess I assumed that they'd always wait until they had a few before making any predictions about stuff. :0c
Gino Arizmendi
2017-09-01 13:11:29 +0000 UTC
