Make a crocodile with toffy. Grab your head and stretch it until your neck extends a few feet from your body. If you roll your eyes, this might be what I called a strange-looking Triassic reptile. Tántrofeu similar. More or less.
The assortment of this amusingly long fossilized neck bone animal has confused paleontologists for nearly 170 years. By using computed tomography scans to decompress the crushed skulls from the reptiles’ remains, the researchers finally resolved some annoying questions about this strange animal in August last year.
Copies of Tántrofeu it can reach 5 meters in length, with a tail that exceeds about a third of its length and the body perhaps a quarter. The rest is all neck.
Tanstrophy sizes compared to a human. (Spiekman, et al., Current Biology, 2020)
“Tántrofeu he looked like a stubborn crocodile with a very, very long neck, ”said paleontologist Olivier Rieppel of the Field Museum in Chicago.
Why this reptile has evolved to such widespread dimensions is a complete mystery. The fact that no one could figure out if he preferred to dive into the water or crawl ashore only made it harder to find conclusions.
Part of his curiosity is the shape of the neck bones. Unlike those of a snake or lizard, the cervical vertebrae are there Tántrofeu the fossils extend like those of a giraffe. In fact, when his remains were discovered in 1852, the scattered bones were supposed to be the bones of the elongated wings of a flying pterosaur.
Not all the people we have unearthed are crocodile-sized either. Some are much smaller, which makes paleontologists question whether some of the specimens in their archives belong to young or represent a completely different species.
This is a common problem in paleontology: the diminutive fossil of a dwarf species can be almost identical to the immature bones of a cub. Separating them requires looking for clues as to whether the skeleton has not yet reached full size or there is still something to do.
Fortunately, these clues can be found far inside the fossils. Just as rings within the trunk of a tree show a record of their age, bones can do the same.
To find them, Rieppel and his colleagues used X-rays in an assortment of Tántrofeu skeletons, converting scans into 3D models using high-resolution computed tomography (CT) technology.
“The power of computed tomography allows us to see details that would otherwise be impossible to observe in fossils,” said lead author Stephan Spiekman, an expert on the evolution of Triassic reptiles at the University of Zurich.
Growth rings revealed the smallest Tántrofeu in fact, the bodies belonged to adults, making it quite clear that what the researchers had in their hands were two separate species.
To distinguish them, the team called the team the biggest T. hydrides, after the hydra of Greek mythology. Its little cousin kept the original name of the species T longobardico.
The transformation of scans into digital models also provided researchers with a way to rearrange crushed bones into a clearer configuration, which greatly facilitates vision of the entire anatomy of the creature.
“From a heavily crushed skull we were able to reconstruct an almost complete 3D skull, revealing crucial morphological details,” Spiekman said.
With all its bone fragments in place, it seems Tántrofeu it would be fine at home in the water, after all.
The reptile’s skull has nostrils lined up at the top, similar to a crocodile’s snout, which an ambush predator can keep a lung full of air while waiting for a meal to pass.
(Spiekman et al., Current Biology, 2020)
What had been a lot of sharp teeth can also be seen forming a fairly efficient trap for snatching a cephalopod, at least for large-sized species.
“Small species probably fed on small-shelled animals, such as shrimp, in contrast to the fish and squid that ate the large species,” Spiekman said.
“This is really remarkable, because we were expecting the strange neck of Tántrofeu be specialized in a single task, like the neck of a giraffe. But in reality, it allowed for various lifestyles. That completely changes the way we see this animal. “
An illustration showing T. hydrides hunt. (Emma Finley-Jacob)
The fact that the two very similar species had such different ways of using their long bodies made it much easier for them to exist in the same habitats, sharing their environment without competing for the same food sources.
We can almost imagine the coconut-shaped body of the animal lying against the ground on a shallow coast about 242 million years ago, with its head raised to the surface so that its nostrils can sink. ‘air and erect mouth slightly gripped a lost squid where to stumble.
As familiar as the scene feels, Tántrofeu it is still a strange beast.
This research was published in Current biology.
A version of this article was first published in August 2020.