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 …

Reconstructing Marine Reptiles: a Guide to Soft Tissue

Disclaimer: Before I begin, I’d like to clarify certain things about this blog post. This post is not meant to chastise or call-out any specific artists or artworks, nor is meant to complain or to rant. The purpose of this post is to compile a sort of guide for paleoartists when they are reconstructing the …

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 …

Tail regeneration in Macrospondylus bollensis or “Steneosaurus”

While finishing up my blog post on Ellisdale, I came across an older paper by Eric Buffetaut describing cartilage regeneration in the tail of “Steneosaurus” bollensis (Buffetaut, 1985). I previously wrote on this subject, but that text desperately needed an update. Since then the taxonomy has significantly changed with Michela Johnson’s thesis and paper on …

Ellisdale

Important Note: Ellisdale is private property and trespassing is prohibited. The site has fragile and priceless fossils that must be professionally collected due to their small size. Appalachian Primer Forest Undergrowth Imagine traveling back 100 million years into the past, during the early Cenomanian stage of the late Cretaceous, what will later become the Cedar …

About me

Hey there! My name's Elisandre Ardeo and I'm an amateur biology student currently pursuing a bachelors degree at the University of Mary Washington. I created this blog to explore certain academic subjects with my colleagues and creating our own conclusions backed by current research. I don't personally work in paleontology myself however I study habitat …