User:Abyssal/Nectosaurus

Nectosaurus

Nectosaurus was a genus of thalattosaur named by Berkeley paleontologist John C. Merriam in 1905. The name of the genus means "swimming lizard". Merriam designated Nectosaurus halius as the type species of the genus. Its name means the "swimming lizard of the sea". The type specime of Nectosaurus halius was three feet long, roughly the same size as a modern iguana. Nectosaurus had teeth shaped like sharply pointed cones bearing thin grooves along their length. Its jaws held these teeth in deep sockets. These sharply pointed teeth distinguish Nectosaurus from its relative Thalattosaurus, which had blunt, conical teeth. These differences in tooth anatomy suggest that these marine reptiles had different diets. The pointed teeth of Nectosaurus would have been useful for feeding on soft bodied swimming animals like fish. By contrast, Thalattosaurus probably used its blunter teeth to crush the shells of local mollusks, like ammonites. Both Nectosaurus and Thalattosaurus were preserved in the Triassic Hosselkus Limestone of California. The type specimen may have been so small because it wasn't fully grown. Bones of an animal about four times this size were found nearby, but they were too poorly preserved to be confidently referred to Nectosaurus. If these poorly preserved bones were Nectosaurus remains the species grew to much greater size than that of the type specimen. Their poor preservation leaves too much uncertainty to rule out that they may have been from some other type of animal.