Sea Kraits, Sea Snakes, and the Unending Success of the Sea Serpent

For most of human history, we have had a fascination with the sea, and mingled with that fascination - a deep seated fear and respect for its untamable power, which has manifested throughout the world in stories of gods and sea monsters. Among the most enduring of these is the idea of the sea serpent, no doubt an extension of our own long and complicated relationship with snakes. Sea serpents have permeated our imaginations, featuring everywhere from the tall tales of Victorian sailors to the legends of some of the most ancient civilizations on Earth. In some stories they are responsible for the creation of the world, in others for its destruction. Most supposed sightings of sea serpents throughout history are in actuality the result of exaggeration or misidentification of other objects. But far from being relegated to myth, sea serpents are very real, and they are among the most successful of all marine tetrapods, spanning between them nearly 100 million years of Earth’s history. Though they may be far from the monstrous, ship-sinking giants of myth, the vibrant reality of the sea serpent is every bit as fascinating and alluring as any legend.

Thalattosauroid Skulls & Feeding Behavior: the Weird and the Weirder

Preface Thalattosaurs were an order of indeterminate diapsid reptiles known exclusively from the Triassic. These sea dwelling reptiles were divided into two superfamilies, Thalattosauroidea and Askeptosauroidea. The slender bodied, lizard-esque Askeptosauroids were long snouted coastal animals and the deeper bodied Thalattosauroids were better adapted to life in the water, even entirely lacking the potential limited …

Polar Oddities and Bathyal Ghouls: The Unspoken Diversity of the Cryptoclidids

The Cryptoclididae were a very widespread family of plesiosaurs, both temporally and geographically, stretching from the Middle Jurassic to the Early Cretaceous and achieving a near global distribution. The most famous cryptoclidids were those found in the Oxford Clay of England, including Cryptoclidus itself. While many Cryptoclidids have received fairly extensive study, their actual ecology …

What Sea Dragons Ate: Plesiosaur Diets Revised

An overzealous Nakonanectes bites off more than it can chew. Art by Tosha Hollmann By Tosha Hollmann, Christian Halliwell, and Elisandre Ardeo Among the very first fossils to have been scientifically studied and recognized as belonging to extinct animals are the enigmatic plesiosaurs, with Plesiosaurus itself having been described based on fossils found by Mary …