The Bulldog Faced Sea Monster: Spatulidentatus breviceps

Publication Info:

Transcript:

Mei Yang et al. 2026. A new Sauropterygian (Reptilia: Sauropterygia) Spatulidentatus breviceps gen. et sp. nov. from Middle Triassic in border area of Yunnan and Guizhou. Geological Review 72 (4): 1280-1285; doi: 10.16509/j.georeview.2025.11.052

Meet Spatulidentatus breviceps, the newly named Triassic plesiosaurus relative from China. This 9 foot long Sauropterygian had a hammer shaped jaw and spoon shaped teeth!

Episode 334

Notes:

There's a brand new species of bulldog-faced sea monster. So, sauropterygians are a group of reptiles, specifically usually marine reptiles, that evolved from terrestrial ancestors. It includes animals like plesiosaurs and pliosaurs, which are obviously plesiosaurs. But, it was an incredibly diverse and successful group of animals that lived from the Triassic to, you know, some of the longest-living lineages like plesiosaurs made it right up to the end Cretaceous extinction. This is Spatulidentatus breviceps the brand new basal sauropterygian that was just discovered in Triassic China. It is a remarkably complete skeleton, and it would have been about 9 ft long. Its head is a little crushed, which kind of adds to the bulldog appearance. But, it's still a relatively short skull at just over 5 in, or only about 5% of the total body length. And its name comes from its weird teeth, cuz it has, first of all, what's kind of described as a hammer-shaped jaw, but then flat, spoon-shaped, or spatula-shaped teeth. While the exact position of a bunch of different animals in the early roots of sauropterygians are a little iffy, paleontologists are confident that this was an extremely basal member of the group, along with other animals like placodonts. And at 245 million years old, that's not super surprising. As usual, if you want more information, here's the source.