Plesiosaurs on the rocks: the terrestrial capabilities of four-flippered marine reptiles

Maurice Wilson's charming c. 1958 painting of plesiosaurs coming ashore, from the Daily Mail Boys Annual (note "boys": girls aren't allowed to be interested in prehistory. Get out of our tree house!). Such depictions were commonplace until a few decades ago, but are all but extinct now. So what's happened to the idea that plesiosaurs could venture onto land?

Until comparatively recently it was not uncommon to see depictions of plesiosaurians* on rocks and beaches as if they had hauled themselves from the sea like breeding sea turtles or basking pinnipeds. Such restorations have a long history. Some of the earliest marine reptile palaeoart shows plesiosaurians on beaches or very shallow water, and we've even seen land-based plesiosaurians in feature films and documentaries, including notable sequences in When Dinosaurs Roamed the Earth (1969) and Walking with Dinosaurs (1999, below).

*Why 'plesiosaurians' rather than 'plesiosaurs'? Though a common vernacular, the term 'plesiosaurs' is potentially confusing as it could either refer to a number of marine reptile clades (e.g. plesiosauroids, plesiosaurids) or body plans (plesiosauromorphs). 'Plesiosauria' has a less ambiguous meaning as it specifically refers to the clade encompassing rhomaleosaurids, pliosauroids and plesiosauroids, so it might be a preferable catch-all term this marine reptile clade.

Today, it's much rarer to see plesiosaurians depicted outside of the aquatic realm. For... reasons, I'm restoring a number of marine reptiles at the moment, so I've been wondering if it would be acceptable to revive artwork of these creatures on rocky shores, beaches and other coastlines, if only to bring some variation to my marine scenes. As usual, this inquiry began with a literature crawl. Because 19th century palaeoart suggests palaeontologists once imagined these animals as routinely emerging from the waves, I expected marine reptile papers to be full of discussion about the terrestrial prospects of plesiosaurians, perhaps with an in-depth analysis of the concept bringing an end to the artistic tradition of depicting them on land. The transition from imagining plesiosaurians as semi-aquatic to fully aquatic seems to have happened organically, however: if there's a watershed paper or significant debate behind this, I've missed it. Richard Ellis' 2003 book Sea Dragons - perhaps the closest thing we have to an all-encompassing introductory review of marine reptiles - seems to confirm my independent findings, portraying plesiosaur terrestrial abilities as highly doubtful, but also a question without a firm answer in scientific literature.

Jurassic plesiosaur Cryptocleidus sits around the coasts of the Oxford Clay Sea in 1999's Walking with Dinosaurs. Uploaded to Youtube by user MARTINEZZZ365.

The idea of plesiosaurians leaving water has been strongly tied to historic uncertainty about their reproductive habits. It stands to reason that, if plesiosaurians laid eggs, they must have somehow dragged their way out of the sea to construct their nests (Taylor 1981, 1986). The notion that plesiosaurians could have given birth to live young is pretty old (e.g. Seeley 1896) but scant evidence of their reproductive strategies prevented dismissal of land-based nesting habits until relatively recently. We now have evidence of live birth in plesiosaurian relatives (nothosauroids, Sander 1988; Renesto et al. 2003; Cheng et al. 2004) as well as a true plesiosaurian (a polycotylid, O'Keefe and Chiappe 2011), and so we needn't imagine plesiosaurians hauling out onto beaches to lay eggs, turtle-style.

But I'm going to keep pulling at this thread. While their capacity to give birth to live offspring eliminates the behavioural necessity for leaving water, it does not, in itself, demonstrate that plesiosaurian anatomy was functionally incapable of land-based locomotion, or that they did not leave the sea to find refuge or seize prey - orca style - from shorelines. After all, viviparity does not mean that seals, sea otters or even manatees have committed to a fully aquatic life (a voluntarily beached manatee deserves a citation - see Motani et al. 2015). Is there a cogent functional argument for why plesiosaurians might struggle out of water that will let me (and others) escape painting nothing but blue and green pictures?

How plesiosaurians might have moved on land

Our discussion will be aided by first outlining what we might realistically expect of a walking or crawling plesiosaurian. No one, for instance, predicts that plesiosaurians could stride around like sea lions or the plesiosaur in When Dinosaurs Roamed the Earth. Their flipper skeletons were essentially inflexible so they were incapable of being articulated into a walking limb. This precludes walking on their hands and feet in the way that eared seals can. They were also likely incapable of bouncing along in the manner of true seals, where the flexibility of the spine is used to 'hump' their way forward while powerful, gripping claws pull and steer them around. Plesiosaurian bodies were pretty rigid - their robust gastralia and ribs are sometimes superficially compared to turtle shells - and likely incapable of the twisting and bending necessary to bounce their way over shorelines. And in lacking claws, the only contribution their flippers could make to crawling would be crude pushing and lifting actions.

True seals, such as the grey seal (Halichoerus grypus), are far less terrestrially proficient than the eared seals (sea lions, fur seals etc.) and have to bounce or drag themselves around when ashore. Large claws on their flippers help in this activity (and are also useful for scratching). Grey seal cow photo by Georgia Witton-Maclean.

If plesiosaurians could leave the water at all, we have to imagine something more akin to turtle locomotion: using their flippers to push and pull themselves along while lying on their bellies. Their weight and a likely inability to clear their bodies entirely from the ground predicts that much of their energy would go into overcoming drag incurred by their wide bodies and tails. Terrestrial plesiosaurians would need to make full use of their powerful flipper downstroke muscles (soundly evidenced by the enormous muscles of their chest and the underside of their hips; see Carpenter et al. 2010; Araújo and Correia 2015) to lift their bodies and propel themselves forward. The exact motion of their flippers remains controversial, but is likely to have been a wingbeat-like action (Taylor 1986; Carpenter et al. 2010; Liu et al. 2015; Muscutt et al. 2017) that may have been enough to shove plesiosaurians over shorelines. The picture we're building here is of a slow and laborious means of locomotion. If plesiosaurians did intentionally leave water, they almost certainly visited locations inaccessible to terrestrial predators.

Polycotylid Dolichorhynchops bonneri demonstrating a fairly typical plesiosaurian torso and flipper construction. At face value, the retention of four limbs and stout limb girdles looks like terrestrial locomotion shouldn't be too hard for these guys - they certainly look more terrestrially capable than many other marine tetrapods. From Carpenter et al. (2010). Scale bar is 1 m.

I also think we should rule out raw body size as a compelling reason to doubt land-based locomotion in plesiosaurians. There's no reason to regard plesiosaurians as atypically heavy compared to other marine animals (Everhart 2000, Henderson 2006) and, indeed, their general lack of pachyostosic skeletons might make them lightweight compared to some other aquatic tetrapods (e.g. Street and O'Keefe 2010). Many species were probably within the mass ranges of living species known to transition between land and sea. The known maximum limit for this lifestyle is set by bull elephant seals which, according to Wikipedia, reach 3,000 - 4,000 kg. We don't have many plesiosaurian mass estimates to compare this figure to, but a few noteworthy values are Everhart's (2000) predicted mass of 2.8 tonnes for a 9 m long plesiosauroid, and Henderson's (2006) 217 kg 3 m Cryptocleidus. Truly giant plesiosaurians - 10 and 11 m long individuals - are beyond the masses of big elephant seals (Henderson 2006), but this still leaves plenty of small and mid-sized species at or below the mass threshold of marine species that we know can venture onto land, assuming they have the right adaptations. For me, our question is most appropriately addressed through assessment of anatomy and functional morphology, not a priori judgements about size.

Scrutinising the model

The bar we've set for plesiosaurian terrestrial locomotion is thus pretty low: even if they can only shamble up a beach we could consider our conditions met. But how feasible is even this laborious means of getting around on land? To cut to the chase: not very. There are multiple aspects of plesiosaurian anatomy that probably precluded even very basic terrestrial capabilities.

Plesiosaurian flippers, for instance, seem poorly suited for use on coastal substrates. Semi-aquatic species such as turtles, seals and terrestrially-roaming fish have a degree of jointing or articulation in their forelimbs which transforms them from flippers or paddles into walking limbs (Mazouchova et al. 2013, also see this post on the potentially amphibious ichthyosaur Cartorhynchus). A jointed limb performs considerably better on loose substrates (such as those common on beaches, mudflats and other shoreline locations) because it enables greater control of force distribution as animals move. Immobile flippers tend to skim over or dig into sand or mud, while jointed limbs can respond to yielding substrates to maximise lift and propulsive forces. Where substrates have already been disturbed, fixed-shape flippers can struggle to get any purchase at all (Mazouchova et al. 2013).

The evolution of the plesiosaurian flipper - represented here with early sauropterygians (A - B) and true plesiosaurians (C - D) involves the development of tightly fitting bones and removal of joint mobility. This makes for a superior flipper for an underwater flier, but compromises their terrestrial capacity. Image and caption from Storrs (1993).

Assuming these findings apply to plesiosaurians - and there's no reason they shouldn't - their effectively immobile flippers present a major barrier to terrestrial activity. Plesiosaurian flippers lack both obvious bony joints or significant cartilaginous regions that would allow them to flex, so they best fit those modelled flippers which skid around or dig into the substrates they're meant to traverse. We must consider that their flippers are married to animals that are already encumbered by large size and weight, as well as the additional difficulty of drag forces operating on their bodies as they moved forward. It is not hard not to imagine a beached plesiosaurian like a heavy vehicle stuck in sand, spinning its wheels as it tries to move forward.

The issues with plesiosaurian limbs do not stop there, as their limb girdles are also ill-equipped for supporting their weight on land. While augmented ventrally to accommodate big downstroke muscles, the upper regions of plesiosaurian shoulder and pelvic girdles are only weakly developed. This isn't unusual for aquatic species as a major role of expanded upper limb girdles - specifically the scapulae of the shoulder, and ilium in the hips - is stabilisation of the limb girdles during terrestrial locomotion (some readers may recall us discussing this recently in context of another marine reptile, Helveticosaurus). But while adequate for life at sea, on land these small girdle elements provide only weak girdle support and thus impede locomotion, and this was probably true for plesiosaurians. Though retaining a connection between the ilia and sacral vertebrae, the articulation is weak and ligamentous, and thus unsuited to weight-bearing (O'Keefe and Chiappe 2011). Similarly, their small scapulae leave little space for muscles associated with stabilising the shoulder against the body, and the shoulder is poorly braced for terrestrial locomotion (see Rieppel 1989 for discussion, also Araújo and Correia 2015). We thus have flippers ill-suited to land-based locomotion attached to limb girdles which are maladapted to weight-bearing. These are not the features of animals that were regularly hauling themselves onto shorelines.

Pelvis of Brancasaurus brancai in lateral (A) and medial (B) view, from Carpenter et al. (2010). Note the extremely narrow ilium: this structure articulates with the vertebrae overlying the hip to act as an important brace for the pelvic girdle during terrestrial locomotion, so its small size does not bode well for the prospects of plesiosaurs leaving water.

And there are further impacts from the reduction of the scapula to be explored. The muscles that elevate our heads and necks are anchored to our scapulae as well as our vertebrae, so the size of bones making up our shoulders dictates how large muscles important to neck elevation and control (e.g. the trapezius, levator scapulae) can be. Plesiosaurians famously have large necks and/or heads, but lack the weight-saving adaptations seen in similarly-proportioned land animals, such as pneumatic tissues and reduction or displacement of neck musculature towards the body (e.g. Taylor and Wedel 2013, also see this discussion of the lifestyle of Tanystropheus). Their necks and heads must have thus been heavy compared to those of large necked or big-headed terrestrial reptiles**, so we might expect substantial shoulder bones to anchor massive neck elevators if they were routinely leaving water. This casts their tiny scapulae as the exact opposite of what we might expect if these animals were routinely crawling around on land.

**To put some numbers on this, Henderson (2006), modelled plesiosaurian heads and necks with tissue densities of 1.05 g/l, about 1.5 times heavier than a value we assume for a bird or bird-like dinosaur.

The pectoral region and musculature of Rhomaleosaurus, modified from Araújo and Correia (2015). While the humerus is well muscled, the scapula is proportionally tiny compared to the chest, which has implications for shoulder stability and carriage of the head and neck.

Plesiosaurians could have developed an alternative approach to supporting the weight of their heads and necks out of water, such as bulking up the muscles surrounding their neck vertebrae. If so, we could predict structures equivalent to withers (elevated vertebral spines over the shoulders related to expanded neck musculature) in species with particularly large heads and necks. Such structures are not to be found plesiosaurians however, so I don't think this idea is compelling. This being so, it looks like neither the shoulders or anterior trunk vertebrae provide sufficient space for the powerful neck muscles needed to elevate their necks and heads on land for sustained periods. The impact of struggling to lift their heads for long intervals could include further impedance to their locomotion (additional drag, difficulty overcoming obstacles) as well as exposing their facial tissues to abrasion and other damage.

Ventral view of rhomaelosaurid Meyerasaurus victor, as figured by Smith and Vincent (2010). Note that the extensive bones of the chest, hips and gastric regions are entirely unfused: like many secondarily marine animals, plesiosaurian skeletons were likely far more cartilaginous than their terrestrial ancestors. Scale bar is 1 m.

A final, but no less significant, consideration for our inquiry is the high volume of cartilage associated with the plesiosaurian skeleton. A glut of unfused bones and loosely fitting contours between closely associated elements betrays a skeletal system held together primarily through extensive amounts of cartilage tissue. This includes areas of relevance to land-based locomotion, such as the shoulder and hip joints, the limb girdles and the region between the gastralia and ribs. In water, these softer connections wouldn't cause any issue, but on land the flexibility and softness of cartilage might weaken skeletal support and strength. The hypothesis outlined above posits that land-based plesiosaurians are essentially moving around with brute force, shoving their large masses around with motions of their flippers against large drag forces. Under this scenario, a relatively rigid and uncompromising skeletal frame would be ideal, whereas one with large volumes of cartilage would make movement less efficient.

What about small-bodied plesiosaurians?

Without any aspects of plesiosaurian anatomy looking incompatible with terrestrial activity, we might need to play a biomechanical get-out-of-jail-free card to prevent abandonment of this concept altogether: small body size. Inescapable rules of scaling mean that a given bauplan, expressed at smaller size, can perform biomechanical feats impossible for bigger individuals. Might small plesiosaurian species or juveniles exploit greater relative tissue strength ratios, lower body masses and improved muscle power:weight ratios to haul themselves onto land, leaving only larger plesiosaurians confined to water?

The pliosaurid Thalassiodracon hawkinsi is one of the smallest plesiosaurians known at c. 2 m long, and yet it bears all the same hallmarks of incompetent terrestrial abilities as its larger relatives. Are the virtues of small size enough to justify thinking animals of this size could leave the water? Photo from Wikipedia, by the paleobear, CC BY 2.0.

I must admit that I'm skeptical even here. Anatomically speaking, small plesiosaurians have the same terrestrially-inhibited anatomy as their larger relatives: inflexible flippers, high cartilage volumes, and low weight-bearing capabilities for the body, head and neck. Smaller size could make all the difference, but size alone is of ambiguous significance to predictions of extinct animal behaviour. It's clearly a factor in what fossil species could and couldn't do, but it should not overshadow better-established relationships between form and function when considering extinct animal lifestyles (see also: flight in giant pterosaurs). So while small size theoretically makes terrestrial locomotion more achievable for an aquatic animal, it's ultimately circumstantial evidence for this behaviour and not an especially compelling counterargument.

And as a final, closing thought on this, it's also worth considering that plesiosaurians were generally large-bodied creatures. Genuinely small species (such as the c. 2 m long Thalassiodracon hawkinsi) are rare and even their offspring were large (e.g. 1.5 m calf lengths in 4.7 m long mothers - O'Keefe and Chiappe 2011). Mesozoic shorelines were probably not swarming with small plesiosaurians even if they did have superior terrestrial capabilities, because by and large plesiosaurians weren't small creatures.

Bring on the blue paints

So, should palaeoartists get back to painting plesiosaurs out of water? Sadly, no. Any notion that plesiosaurians were capable of hauling themselves onto land is not only unnecessary in light of what we know of their reproductive biology, but also contradicts much of what we understand about the functional morphology of semi-aquatic animals. Their four-flipped construction looks a little more terrestrially-capable than the body of a whale or ichthyosaur, but I suspect an accidentally beached plesiosaurian would be in just as much trouble as these more classically-shaped marine forms. History shows that we can make beached plesiosaurians look half convincing in art, but it's a hollow victory: the science is not on our side.

I still find it odd that there isn't a more detailed discussion of plesiosaurian - or maybe broader sauropterygian - terrestrial capability in marine reptile literature. After all, many clades generally regarded as relatives or even ancestral to plesiosaurians are regarded as semi-aquatic (e.g. nothosaurs, Helveticosaurus) and there has to be an interesting story there regarding the progressive abandonment of land. Hopefully, studies along these lines will be performed before we're much older. But for the time being, I'll be restoring all my plesiosaurians in water, where they almost certainly belonged. I'll leave you with this painting of Pliosaurus kevani in their rightful habitat.

Pliosaurus kevani large and small, at home in the sea. Junior is particularly happy that it doesn't have to venture out onto land, probably because it's always freezing cold getting out of the water, and pliosaurids were surprisingly wimpy about that sort of thing. #palaeofact

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References

• Carpenter, K., Sanders, F., Reed, B., Reed, J., & Larson, P. (2010). Plesiosaur swimming as interpreted from skeletal analysis and experimental results. Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science, 1-34.
• Cheng, Y. N., Wu, X. C., & Ji, Q. (2004). Triassic marine reptiles gave birth to live young. Nature, 432(7015), 383.
• Ellis, R. (2003). Sea dragons: predators of the prehistoric oceans. University Press of Kansas.
• Everhart, M. J. (2000). Gastroliths associated with plesiosaur remains in the Sharon Springs Member of the Pierre Shale (Late Cretaceous), western Kansas. Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science (1903), 64-75.
• Henderson, D. M. (2006). Floating point: a computational study of buoyancy, equilibrium, and gastroliths in plesiosaurs. Lethaia, 39(3), 227-244.
• Liu, S., Smith, A. S., Gu, Y., Tan, J., Liu, C. K., & Turk, G. (2015). Computer simulations imply forelimb-dominated underwater flight in plesiosaurs. PLoS computational biology, 11(12), e1004605.
• Mazouchova, N., Umbanhowar, P. B., & Goldman, D. I. (2013). Flipper-driven terrestrial locomotion of a sea turtle-inspired robot. Bioinspiration & biomimetics, 8(2), 026007.
• Motani, R., Jiang, D. Y., Chen, G. B., Tintori, A., Rieppel, O., Ji, C., & Huang, J. D. (2015). A basal ichthyosauriform with a short snout from the Lower Triassic of China. Nature, 517(7535), 485.
• Muscutt, L. E., Dyke, G., Weymouth, G. D., Naish, D., Palmer, C., & Ganapathisubramani, B. (2017). The four-flipper swimming method of plesiosaurs enabled efficient and effective locomotion. Proc. R. Soc. B, 284(1861), 20170951.
• O’Keefe, F. R., & Chiappe, L. M. (2011). Viviparity and K-selected life history in a Mesozoic marine plesiosaur (Reptilia, Sauropterygia). Science, 333(6044), 870-873.
• Renesto, S., Lombardo, C., Tintori, A., & Danini, G. (2003). Nothosaurid embryos from the Middle Triassic of northern Italy: an insight into the viviparity of nothosaurs? Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 23(4), 957-960.
• Rieppel, O. (1989). Helveticosaurus zollingeri Peyer (Reptilia, Diapsida) skeletal paedomorphosis, functional anatomy and systematic affinities. Palaeontographica Abteilung A, 123-152.
• Sander, P. M. (1988). A fossil reptile embryo from the Middle Triassic of the Alps. Science, 239(4841), 780-783.
• Seeley, H.G. (1896) On a pyritous concretion from the Lias of Whitby. Annual Report of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, 1895, 20–9.
• Storrs, G. W. (1993). Function and phylogeny in sauropterygian (Diapsida) evolution. American Journal of Science, 293(A), 63.
• Street, H. P., & O'Keefe, F. R. (2010). Evidence of pachyostosis in the cryptocleidoid plesiosaur Tatenectes laramiensis from the Sundance Formation of Wyoming. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 30(4), 1279-1282.
• Taylor, M. A. (1981). Plesiosaurs-rigging and ballasting. Nature, 290, 628-629.
• Taylor, M. A. (1986). Marine reptiles: Lifestyle of plesiosaurs. Nature, 319(6050), 179-179.
• Taylor, M. P., & Wedel, M. J. (2013). Why sauropods had long necks; and why giraffes have short necks. PeerJ, 1, e36.

Helveticosaurus: the small-headed, long-armed Triassic marine reptile that just wants to be your friend :(

Helveticosaurus zollingeri, one of those strange Triassic marine reptiles that no-one ever talks about, wrestling in a coastal swamp. Not everything about being a marine tetrapod takes place in the sea.

The fossil record is full of fascinating, relatively well-represented species that, on paper, seem like they should be widely known and featured in all sorts of palaeontological media, and yet in reality are almost entirely overlooked in popular literature, documentaries and games. Triassic marine reptiles are definitely among these animals. Many are distinctive, unusual and well-researched species that are just as interesting (if not more so) than many more familiar Triassic animals, and yet their popular coverage is frequently dire: even their Wikipedia pages are little more than footnotes.

In interests of trying to correct this injustice even a little, it's time to talk about a Triassic marine reptile with a criminally poor popular coverage/deserved interest ratio: Helveticosaurus zollingeri. Discovered in Middle Triassic rocks of Switzerland in 1933 and described some years later (Peyer 1955), this small-headed, long-armed marine reptile represents a unique anatomical experiment among aquatic tetrapods: a sort of lizard-seal thing with a skull from an '80s supernatural horror film. Its basic bauplan is well demonstrated thanks to a mostly complete and reasonably preserved holotype, missing only the end of the tail and some parts of the limbs. Alas, some especially informative aspects of its anatomy are poorly represented, including the skull, distal limbs and pelvis. Though all are present, they are disarticulated and difficult to interpret. Additional Helveticosaurus specimens are known (Kuhn-Schnyder 1974), but are not as well preserved or complete as the holotype and don't add much to our knowledge of this species (Rieppel 1989). Though attracting reasonable scientific interest in the last half century, much about its lifestyle and evolutionary relationships remain unexplored or contentious.

The Helveticosaurus zollingeri holotype, as illustrated by Kuhn-Schnyder (1974). Although a little jumbled, a good portion of the skeleton is preserved. It's unfortunate the skull is such a mess. Check out Wikipedia for a photo of the actual specimen.

Much of our modern take on this animal has been informed by Olivier Rieppel's 1989 paper on its anatomy and function, and the following overview is largely based on this assessment. Helveticosaurus was a small-headed creature with a short neck, long body and a tail of unknown length. The preserved portion of the tail comprises large, well developed vertebrae and it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume it was much longer when complete. If we had a more secure idea of the phylogenetic position of Helveticosaurus we might take a stab at estimating the tail length, but this doesn't seem possible at the moment.

Tail proportions are not the only issue confusing predictions of the overall body length of this animal. When preparing this post I found that the total length estimates of Helveticosaurus provided in modern papers are at odds with measurements of skeletal elements within the holotype, to the effect that we might be significantly underestimating its overall size. Recent papers give a total predicted length of c. 2 m for the holotype animal (e.g. Rieppel 1989; Cheng et al. 2014), while also reporting that the lower jaw of the same specimen is 250 mm long, and the humerus as 205 mm (Rieppel 1989; Cheng et al. 2014). Even just eyeballing images of the holotype suggests some sort of miscalculation here: there's no way the entire animal - including the missing tail - is just 10 times the length of these bones. Using a line drawing of the holotype from Khun-Schnyder (1974) and the reported mandible and humerus measurements, I found that 2.1 - 2.8 m better describes the length of the preserved skeleton (see calculations in the image below, note that the reported 45 mm difference between the humerus and mandible length is not obvious in the drawing I used, resulting in two different body length estimates. Scaling from photos or illustrations is not a substitute for measuring actual specimens). This is back-of-the-envelope stuff, but it's enough to convince me that Helveticosaurus wasn't a 2 m long animal. I wonder if the figures reported by Khun-Schnyder (1974) are more plausible: he reported a 2.5 m length for the preserved holotype skeleton, and an estimated total length of 3.6 m. That would add another metre onto the holotype, which seems quite plausible - maybe even conservative - to me.

Just how big was Helveticosaurus? It's hard to say without a complete specimen, but the individual represented by the holotype skeleton clearly exceeded the oft-cited 2 m body length. Perhaps other published estimates of 3.6 m are more reasonable?

One of the most interesting features of Helveticosaurus is its short, c. 25 cm long skull. Alas, the best Helveticosaurus skull remains we have look as if they were hit by a truck before fossilisation: scattered, broken, and with many unidentifiable parts (Rieppel 1989). Enough is known to allow for a tentative reconstruction but a confident picture of the face of Helveticosaurus awaits better preserved material. The front of the upper jaw was abbreviated, blunt and tall, creating a skull profile that might have been somewhat box-like in lateral aspect. The orbital and temporal regions are poorly known, but they seem to hint at the presence of an upper and lower temporal fenestrae and a large eye socket. A number of oversize conical teeth line each jaw. The exact number of teeth is unknown, but a notable feature is the large 'canine' in the upper jaw. Neither the size of the temporal region or the lower jaw (the latter being one of the best preserved cranial elements) imply an especially large set of jaw muscles, though the mandible has an expanded retroarticular process - a prong of bone at the back of the jaw associated with opening the mouth. This likely has implications for the feeding style of Helveticosaurus, although I'm unaware of any studies into its function. The aberrant size of the Helveticosaurus skull is peculiar for a marine reptile lacking a long neck, and perhaps only challenged in proportion by the Triassic marine vacuum cleaner Atopodentatus (Cheng et al. 2014). Distinct anatomy make it clear that these animals were very different ecologically however, and it's possible that their diminutive skulls reflect very different adaptive regimes.

Tentative Helveticosaurus skull reconstruction, from Rieppel (1989). The jaws remain the best known elements, and some question exists over the arrangement of the rest of the skull. Scale bar represents 50 mm.

The body of Helveticosaurus is similar, at least superficially, to many other Triassic marine reptiles, especially early sauropterygians. It's torso was long, with well-developed and high-spined vertebrae, stout ribs and an extensive set of gastralia (belly ribs). Differentiation between the vertebral spines at the front and back of the body hint at some functional distinction, perhaps related to larger muscles associated with the shoulder region (Rieppel 1989). As is assumed for plesiosaurs, the combination of stout ribs and gastralia likely reduced the flexibility of the torso and may have improved swimming efficiency. The tail, so much as it is known, bears the same high neural spines as the trunk vertebrae, as well as caudal ribs. These features indicate it was likely well-muscled for use in sculling propulsion, although the chevrons are not particularly large. Assuming these anchored the caudofemoralis muscle, as they do in most reptiles, I wonder if this indicates diminished musculature associated with hindlimb retraction.

After the peculiar head, the forelimbs of Helveticosaurus are perhaps its most unusual feature. They anchored to an atypically well-developed pectoral girdle which - unlike most marine reptiles - has a long, robust scapula. Marine reptile shoulder blades are often extremely reduced, little more than bony nubbins that create a shoulder joint. But here, the scapulae are long enough to create a deep, U-shaped shoulder girdle that would not look out of place on a terrestrial animal (Rieppel 1989). The forelimb itself is proportionally elongate, both with respect to the body and in comparison to the hindlimb. It's exact length remains uncertain because the bones of the hand are scattered, but the major limb bones are each 10% longer than their counterparts in the hindlimb. The humerus in particular is very long for a marine reptile, and maintains hallmarks of functionality beyond just being the top of an stiffened flipper (Rieppel 1989). The fingers are hyperphalangic (i.e. they have an enhanced number of finger bones) in a fashion typical of marine tetrapods, and - in contrast to several Helveticosaurus palaeoartistic reconstructions (all five of them that exist) - they lack claws. The arrangement of the fingers requires some reconstruction but their slender bones and arrangement in the holotype implies more of a broad, rounded paddle than a narrow ichthyosaur or plesiosaur-like flipper.

Helveticosaurus forelimb, as illustrated by Rieppel (1989). Some ribs and gastralia have been removed for clarity. Note the elongate scapulae and long forelimb elements - this is not a typical marine reptile arm. Scale bar represents 100 mm.

The hindlimb shares some general characteristics with the forelimb - relatively elongate limb bones for a marine form, hyperphalangy, spreading, unclawed digits - but is shorter, noticeably more gracile and probably more cartilaginous than the forelimb. The pelvis is poorly known, but it also appears to have been at least partly cartilaginous, the joints of the pelvic bones being insufficient to contact one another around the hip joint without some additional skeletal material (Rieppel 1989). These features imply that the hindlimb was structurally weaker than the forelimb.

How might this mix of anatomies have functioned? A qualified assessment by Rieppel (1989) makes some sensible interpretations of Helveticosaurus locomotion. On the whole, the animal is mostly adapted for life in water, with aquatic adaptations being especially obvious on the limbs, pelvis and tail. Although the tail is missing, its robust, high-spined and complex vertebrae are consistent with features of sculling animals and we might envisage Helveticosaurus propelling itself with powerful motions of its tail when swimming, akin to marine iguanas or crocodylians. The weak pelvis and hindlimb indicate the rear limbs contributed less to propulsion. Rieppel proposes that, like swimming lizards, they may have been pulled against the body when swimming save for the occasional action to help with steering or thrust. The forelimbs were evidently strong and likely useful in swimming, though the configuration of the shoulder girdle does not imply any rigid kinematics for underwater flight in the manner of a penguin or turtle. They might have functioned more like the foreflippers of otariid seals (the eared seal group: sealions, fur seals etc.) in providing some thrust, but also playing important roles in steering and breaking (Rieppel 1989). While the shoulder girdle does not seem optimised for powerful downstrokes, the large size of the arm, and implied articulation of at least some parts of the limb (see below), suggest it was a dynamic steering aid. Helveticosaurus may have been quite an agile swimmer.

But where Helvetiosaurus becomes especially interesting is out of the water. Even in the Middle Triassic many marine reptiles had wholly committed themselves to aquatic lifestyles, but Helveticosaurus appears to have remained some terrestrial capabilities. Why it did this remains uncertain: did it still lay eggs? Did it have a complex life history involving both land and sea phases? Did it live in settings where periodic escapes from the sea were advantageous? We don't have insights into any of this yet, but we can predict how Helveticosaurus might have moved around on land. Supporting limbs during terrestrial gaits is not simply a matter of having strong limb bones, it's also necessary to have a robust and stable limb girdle. For shoulders, this requires support and control exerted by muscles attached to the torso and neck, as well as having a big enough scapula for these to act on. The robust shoulder girdle of Helveticosaurus seems to meet these criteria. It not only provides space for the necessary muscle to support and move the forelimb on land but also - with particular reference to the relatively big scapula - is sufficiently developed to brace the shoulder against the body skeleton (Rieppel 1989). The length and robustness of the forelimb is also notable, as are the retention of humeral features associated with flexing the lower limb. Marine reptile limbs are often immobile south of the shoulder or hip, and readers with good memories might recall that this makes terrestrial locomotion difficult. The articulations of the Helveticosaurus limb are not well preserved - they seem to have been highly cartilaginous - so we don't know the full extent of its forelimb mobility, but muscle attachment scars hint at abilities to flex the wrist and fingers (Rieppel 1989). Any flexible jointing would enhance its terrestrial potential, so this is another tick in the box for relatively proficient land locomotion. The hindlimb, in being less developed and more cartilaginous, probably contributed little to terrestrial locomotion. Helveticosaurus may have therefore crawled and flopped around more like a seal than a lizard, using its arms to drag and push itself around, maybe occassionally assisted by its legs and thrashing motions of the tail to propel itself faster. It must have been pretty neat to see a reptile move like this: a sort of creeping, lolopping reptile-mermaid topped off with the face of the Engineer from Hellraiser.

When Helveticosaurus collide. In the image illustrating this article, I've assumed that the terrestrial capabilities of Helveticosaurus were sufficient to bring them into terrestrial coastal habitats, perhaps for mating, nesting or some other reason. We have no evidence of this happening, but analogous behaviours are seen today in turtles and seals, some of which travel kilometres inland despite their limited terrestrial abilities. Maybe some Mesozoic marine reptiles did the same.

We can't go this far into discussion of Helveticosaurus without questioning its ecology. I'm not aware of any analyses that address this issue, so this paragraph is shot from the hip based on what others have said about its functional morphology and a basic form-function reading of Helveticosaurus anatomy - take it with an appropriate pinch of salt. As already noted, the skull of Helveticosaurus is too poorly preserved to say much about specifics of foraging, but its long, slender teeth clearly betray a predatory lifestyle. Worn tooth tips indicate that it did not eat entirely soft, fleshy prey, but the teeth are not robust enough to suggest a tough diet. I'm aware that a similar suite of dental features occur in pterosaurs that are assumed to small fish, squid and other diminutive swimming creatures (Ősi 2010), and I wonder if a similar diet might apply here. The skull of Helveticosaurus is also too small to suggest it routinely ate large prey, though I guess scavenging carcasses is difficult to rule out. The enlarged retroarticular process is of interest because such features are often seen in suction feeders - aquatic animals which rapidly open their mouths to suck up prey within a pressure gradient. Short faces often characterise suction feeders too, but we need knowledge of other anatomies - such as the bones of the throat - to reliably infer such foraging strategies (Motani et al. 2014). We also have to acknowledge that a short jaw and specifics of the posterior mandible can be related to other functions. A small head capable of fitting between rocks and other obstacles would be useful if Helveticosaurus sought benthic or demersal prey, for instance. The combination of a swimming tail and large limbs may have made Helveticosaurus relatively agile, a useful trait when chasing small prey. In all, I wonder if the seal analogy applied to some aspects of Helveticosaurus anatomy and locomotion might extend to its lifestyle. It would be great to see this looked into with a dedicated study.

Bringing this post back to firmer scientific ground, it's finally time to ask: just what the heck is Helveticosaurus? Initially interpreted as a placodont (Peyer 1955), Helveticosaurus has since jumped all over the reptile tree as different teams use different approaches to resolve its placement. There are probably several reasons for our inability to pin down the evolutionary home of Helveticosaurus. Firstly, the anatomy of Helveticosaurus confuses character distribution in phylogenetic trees, it having features of enough groups to scramble easy reading of homologies and convergences (Ezcurra et al. 2014). This makes Helveticosaurus very sensitive to taxon and character choices used in our evolutionary calculations, and prone to shifting in position dramatically from one cladogram to the next (e.g. Chen et al. 2014). Helveticosaurus is far from the only marine reptile to present such a problem, and there are debates among researchers about how to deal with what some regard as a problematic amount of convergence between aquatic Mesozoic reptiles (see, for recent takes, Chen et al. 2014 vs. Scheyer et al. 2017). A third issue concerns the ongoing controversy over the origins of marine reptiles generally. The relationships of even well-supported groups like ichthyosauromorphs, turtles and sauropterygians to other reptiles remain contested, and these clades have major 'pull' in phylogenies when they move about, hauling possible relatives like Helveticosaurus around as tree topologies change.

We don't know of any species quite like Helveticosaurus, but the Triassic diapsid Eusaurosphargis dalsassoi - here represented by an excellent fossil of a juvenile skeleton - has been recovered as a near relative in several recent analyses. Intriguingly, it also seems well adapted for terrestrial locomotion, implying that such abilities may have been common to their branch of marine reptile evolution. Image from Scheyer et al. (2017).

Perhaps for this reason, it's not uncommon to see many authors sidestepping classifying Helveticosaurus altogether, instead simply labelling it an 'enigmatic diapsid' and moving on. But others have tackled the issue more head on and, while it would be premature to say we know what Helveticosaurus is, some clarity is emerging about which branch of reptile evolution it belongs to (even if the position of that branch is a more open question). The placodont affinity for Helveticosaurus has been questioned on grounds of very limited shared anatomies (Sues 1987; Rieppel 1989) and this identification has not been supported in recent analyses. Other ideas - a tentative interpretation as some sort of archosauromorph (Rieppel 1989; Naish 2004) or a near relative of lepidosaurs (Chen et al. 2014) - have also not found much traction. But a large number of authors have recovered Helveticosaurus as a close relative of Sauropterygia (Müller 2004; Bickelmann et al. 2009; Li et al. 2011, 2014; Neenan et al. 2013; Chen et al. 2014; Scheyer et al. 2017), and it's looking like this is the best horse to back concerning the phylogenetic position of this historically enigmatic animal.

Alas, this is not the neat end of the story we might think it is, as the origins of Sauropterygia itself remain poorly understood. In at least some analyses Helveticosaurus and Sauropterygia is part of a marine reptile 'superclade', a huge, unnamed group containing ichthyosaurs, sauropterygians and a number of Triassic lineages that have long struggled to find homes. Another Swiss Triassic reptile, the possibly mostly terrestrial Eusaurosphargis dalsassoi (above), has been postulated as a close relative of Helveticosaurus several times (e.g. Scheyer et al. 2017). Sauropterygians are deeply nested in this 'superclade' and the position of the terrestrially-enabled Helveticosaurus and Eusaurosphargis is interesting with respect to the evolution of aquatic lifestyles in Triassic marine reptiles. Given that more rootward lineages in the 'superclade' are entirely aquatic forms, might genera like Helveticosaurus and Eusaurosphargis represent animals that returned to land from swimming ancestors, or are they representatives of a more basic semiaquatic ancestral bauplan that remains underrepresented in other lineages? At the risk of ending on an old palaeontological cliche, we need more specimens, more data and more investigations to answer these questions.

It turns out that marine reptiles are a pretty fun group, I think you'll be seeing more art and reading more about them here in the coming months. If all goes to plan, we'll be walking (or not) with plesiosaurs and meeting some giant ichthyosaurs before too long.

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References

• Bickelmann, C., Müller, J., & Reisz, R. R. (2009). The enigmatic diapsid Acerosodontosaurus piveteaui (Reptilia: Neodiapsida) from the Upper Permian of Madagascar and the paraphyly of “younginiform” reptiles. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 46(9), 651-661.
• Chen, X. H., Motani, R., Cheng, L., Jiang, D. Y., & Rieppel, O. (2014). The enigmatic marine reptile Nanchangosaurus from the Lower Triassic of Hubei, China and the phylogenetic affinities of Hupehsuchia. PLoS One, 9(7), e102361.
• Cheng, L., Chen, X. H., Shang, Q. H., & Wu, X. C. (2014). A new marine reptile from the Triassic of China, with a highly specialized feeding adaptation. Naturwissenschaften, 101(3), 251-259.
• Ezcurra, M. D., Scheyer, T. M., & Butler, R. J. (2014). The origin and early evolution of Sauria: reassessing the Permian saurian fossil record and the timing of the crocodile-lizard divergence. PLoS One, 9(2), e89165.
• Kuhn-Schnyder, E. (1974). Die Triasfauna der Tessiner Kalkalpen. Neues Jahrbuch der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Zürich, 176, 1–119
• Li, C., Rieppel, O., Wu, X. C., Zhao, L. J., & Wang, L. T. (2011). A new Triassic marine reptile from southwestern China. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 31(2), 303-312.
• Li, C., Jiang, D. Y., Cheng, L., Wu, X. C., & Rieppel, O. (2014). A new species of Largocephalosaurus (Diapsida: Saurosphargidae), with implications for the morphological diversity and phylogeny of the group. Geological Magazine, 151(1), 100-120.
• Motani, R., Ji, C., Tomita, T., Kelley, N., Maxwell, E., Jiang, D. Y., & Sander, P. M. (2013). Absence of suction feeding ichthyosaurs and its implications for Triassic mesopelagic paleoecology. PLoS One, 8(12), e66075.
• Müller, J. (2004). The relationships among diapsid reptiles and the influence of taxon selection. In G. Arratia, M. V. H. Wilson & R. Cloutier (eds.): Recent advances in the origin and early radiation of vertebrates, 379-408.
• Naish, D. (2004). Fossils explained 48: Placodonts. Geology Today, 20(4), 153-158.
• Neenan, J. M., Klein, N., & Scheyer, T. M. (2013). European origin of placodont marine reptiles and the evolution of crushing dentition in Placodontia. Nature Communications, 4, 1621.
• Ősi, A. (2011). Feeding‐related characters in basal pterosaurs: implications for jaw mechanism, dental function and diet. Lethaia, 44(2), 136-152.
• Peyer, R. (1955). Die Triasfauna der Tessiner Kalkalpen. XVIII. Helveticosaurus zollingeri, n. g. n. sp. Schweizerische Palaeontologische Abhandlungen, 72, 1–50.
• Rieppel, O. (1989). Helveticosaurus zollingeri Peyer (Reptilia, Diapsida) skeletal paedomorphosis, functional anatomy and systematic affinities. Palaeontographica Abteilung A, 123-152.
• Scheyer, T. M., Neenan, J. M., Bodogan, T., Furrer, H., Obrist, C., & Plamondon, M. (2017). A new, exceptionally preserved juvenile specimen of Eusaurosphargis dalsassoi (Diapsida) and implications for Mesozoic marine diapsid phylogeny. Scientific reports, 7(1), 4406.
• Sues, H. D. (1987). On the skull of Placodus gigas and the relationships of the Placodontia. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 7(2), 138-144.

Walking with ichthyosaurs: the amphibious ichthyosaur hypothesis

Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkin's (1858?) sketch of amphibious marine reptiles, including a large shambling ichthyosaur. Image borrowed from Frank T. Zumbach's Mysterious World.

One of the most charming aspects of mid-19th century palaeoart are those amphibious marine reptiles: depictions of ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs that hauled themselves onto rocks or beaches to rest, or lunge with open jaws at passers by (above). To modern eyes these images look naive and quaint, a clear reminder of how far our understanding of fossil animals has progressed in the last two centuries.

Of course, art has a habit of imitating life and, a good 150 years after amphibious marine reptiles became unfashionable in palaeoartworks, Ryosuke Motani and colleagues (2014) published a new marine reptile suggested to be capable of locomotion on land as well as in water: the ichthyosauriform Cartorhynchus lenticarpus. This Chinese, Early Triassic species is anatomically remarkable in several respects. Although reminiscent of early ichthyosaurs in overall shape, it has a considerably reduced snout, seems to lack teeth, is just 20 cm from snout to vent despite indications of osteological maturity, and bears enormously long forelimbs. Though unique when first discovered, another, much larger Cartorhynchus-like species has since been found in the same deposits, Sclerocormus parviceps. Together, these animals form a clade at the base of Ichthyosauriformes known as Nasorostra, the 'nose beaks', referring to a defining feature where their nasal bones reach the jaw tip (Jiang et al. 2016).

Holotype specimen of Cartorhynchus lenticarpus. Note the enormous forelimbs with their expansive unossified wrists, indicated by the distal phalanges being well posteriorly displaced from the upper arm bones. From Motani et al. (2014).

The amphibious habits of Cartorhynchus are primarily based on its unusually large forelimbs and small body size, it being reasoned that Cartorhynchus could drag or propel itself over exposed sediments like a mudskipper, turtle or pinniped. I find this idea fascinating: an ichthyosauriform that was at home outside of water? Cartorhynchus certainly deviates from ichthyosaur anatomy and evolutionary trends enough to inspire inquiry about its weird bauplan - if it was not amphibious, it might be doing something else equally unexpected. The amphibious Cartorhynchus hypothesis has received surprisingly little detailed attention online, save for coverage of a 2014 press release and this excellent primer article at Tetrapod Zoology, so there's scope for a closer look at this idea. What is the evidence for amphibious habits in Cartorhynchus, and how does this concept fit models of early ichthyosaur evolution?

The functional basis for an amphibious lifestyle in Cartorhynchus

Motani et al. (2014) present a fairly detailed argument in favour of amphibious habits in Cartorhynchus. The chief lines of evidence are those expansive forelimbs, but it's not just their size that matters: their enormous, unossified carpal regions are also significant. Several early ichthyosauriforms have poorly ossified carpal bones but the unossfied region in Cartorhynchus flippers is proportionally bigger by some margin. This would allow these ordinarily-rigid marine reptile flippers an unusual degree of flexibility and optimise them for terrestrial locomotion. Flipper-based terrestrial motion is surprisingly tricky because its users tend to be suboptimally designed for movement out of water and they almost always have to overcome drag forces acting on the body as well as shove themselves around. Moreover, substrates associated with coasts and waterways tend to be unstable, yielding under pressure and being challenging for even proficient terrestrial animals. These factors mean flippers can easily dig into substrate or slip across it rather than propel their owners about, and it's easy to see why beaching is fatal for so many specialised aquatic species.

Studies (using robot turtles!) suggest that rigid flippers are generally poor at terrestrial locomotion and may even be incapable of moving animals over some surfaces (Mazouchova et al. 2013). A bendy flipper, in contrast, works well, allowing the forelimb to flex before the substrate moves, spreading the weight of the animal over the distal limb and allowing the proximal flipper region to elevate and support the body (Mazouchova et al. 2013; Motani et al. 2014). The unusually expanded flexion zone in Cartorhynchus forelimbs would be well suited to this purpose, and certainly much better at this task than those of other ichthyosaurs. We might note, as an aside, that the lack of flexion zones in other marine reptile flippers, such as those of plesiosaurs, might be good reason to doubt their ability to crawl over land.

Did I mention the robot turtles? There are robot turtles. Supplementary video data from Mazouchova et al. (2013).

The downside of having lots of cartilage in a long flipper is that they are weaker against bending than a more ossified one, so their utility as a walking limb lessen as the forces involved in moving the body increase. It's here where the small size of Cartorhynchus comes into play. Small size equates to low body masses and smaller forces associated with lifting the body, less structural demand on the flipper, and reduced drag effects from the sliding belly. As is so often the case in evolution, small body size might be an enabler for evolutionary experimentation in Cartorhynchus, allowing it to perform feats that its bigger relatives just couldn't even if they were also equipped with giant, bendy fins.

The tail of Cartorhynchus is incompletely known but it's anatomical and phylogenetic proximity to the completely-known Sclerocormus suggests that its tail was long, flexible, and lacked any sort of fin or fluke (Jiang et al. 2016). A relatively simple tail lessens the risk of it dredging sediment or catching on debris during terrestrial locomotion and its flexibility might have permitted its use as a prop or even propulsive organ: fish such as the Pacific leaping blenny show how a long, bendy tail can be used to powerful effects in semi-terrestrial locomotion (Heish 2010, also below). Combinations of fin and axial motion in land-crawling fish can be surprisingly effective over a range of substrates (Standen et al. 2016) and we might assume similar options were available to Cartorhynchus.

 

Leaping blennies, robot turtles... is this the best blog post ever? From Wikipedia, source: Hsieh (2010).

The torso of Cartorhynchus is also of interest for this hypothesis. In contrast to some other Triassic ichthyosaurs, Cartorhynchus has a broad, stout torso rather than a long, laterally-compressed one (Carrol and Dong 1991). Though a wider torso would impart more drag during terrestrial crawling, it would aid stability when crawling over land. Moreover, torso drag can be lessened by shortening the body overall, giving new significance to the low Cartorhynchus pre-sacral vertebral count of 31 vertebrae, instead of a more typical ichthyosaurian count of 40-80 (Motani et al. 2014). Short, narrow hindlimbs, rather than the broad pelvic flippers of some other early ichthyosaurs, might have further aided drag reduction.

Cartorhynchus in context

It seems there's a prima facie argument for considering Cartorhynchus as equipped with some amphibious features. However, we should not get carried away - a suite of evidence for an aquatic lifestyle suggests it wasn't it a specialist denizen of shallow, partly-exposed habitats, but more of an animal able to exploit two realms. It has pachyostotic bones, true flippers rather than webbed walking limbs, and is adapted for suction-feeding: a mechanism where the combination of a small mouth and a large oral cavity creates a pressure differential during feeding, literally sucking small prey into the mouth if it's opened quickly (Motani et al. 2014). This foraging strategy cannot work outside of water so is strong support for Cartorhynchus foraging in fully aquatic settings.

Cartorhynchus also stems from the Nanlinghu Formation, a mudrock and limestone marine deposit rich in fossils of aquatic reptiles and marine invertebrates: ammonoids, bivalves and conodonts. We might take these data as signs that Cartorhynchus was quite happy in water and maybe spent most of its time there, visiting coastlines and beaches on occassion, rather than living there permanently. We should also regard it as a marine animal, not an inhabitant of rivers or swamps (though it would be extremely cool if one turned up in such deposits!).

Holotype of Hupehsuchus nanchangensis, a marine reptile seemingly more closely related to the ancestor of ichthyosaurs than Cartorhynchus. These guys surely deserve their own blog post and painting at some point. From Carroll and Dong (1991).

The relationships of Cartorhynchus to other marine reptiles is also interesting in light of the amphibious hypothesis. You could be forgiven for interpreting Cartorhynchus as some sort of bridge between ichthyosaurs and terrestrial reptiles, but, no, the nasorostran clade seems to nest above the root of the ichthyosaur line between 'true' ichthyosaurs and the fully marine, ichthyosaur-like hupehsuchians (Motani et al. 2014; Jiang et al. 2016). The ichthyosaur + hupehsuchian clade, Ichthyosauromorpha, may be further allied to another group of marine reptiles, the amphibious thalattosaurs (Motani et al. 2014 - Darren Naish has an excellent overview of this topic here). This surrounds Cartorhynchus with lineages that had taken to water in a significant way and we should conclude that any amphibious adaptations of Cartorhynchus do not represent an ichthyosaurian invasion of the sea, but ichthyosaurs returning to land.

Some might consider this surprising evolutionary scenario evidence against the amphibious hypothesis - why would a lineage of marine reptiles start retracing their adaptive steps to become landworthy, when the rest of the group is pressing ahead with more specialised aquatic lifestyles? In response, perhaps we should ask if a potentially amphibious marine reptile is really that surprising. A huge number of vertebrates have transferred between terrestrial and aquatic lifestyles in the last 400 million years, sometimes contrasting with wider adaptive trends taking place in closely related species. Well-understood evolutionary 'transitions' also show that large-scale adaptive phases are often complex with all manner of evolutionary experimentation and dead-end offshoots. We know that bridging aquatic and terrestrial realms can be advantageous to aquatic species - refuge from predators or rough seas, access to food off-limits to other marine species, access to safe habitats for rest or reproduction, etc. - and there's no reason to think ichthyosaurs were incapable of capitalising on these advantages, or immune to their selective draws. With all this in mind, the concept of a marine reptile exploiting semi-exposed habitats isn't really that radical. Maybe the key question here isn't 'why would a marine reptile go rouge and turn landward?' but is 'why aren't we seeing more of this sort of thing?'.

What about Sclerocormus?

A question currently unaddressed in technical literature is whether the other currently known nasorostran, Sclerocormus, might have also bear amphibious hallmarks. It has virtually all the same features that we likened to amphibious adaptations above, the only distinctions being marginally enhanced ossification of the forelimb (though it still retains a comparatively enormous unossified carpal region) and greater size overall (body length of 160 cm, representing an animal about 3.3 times larger than Cartorhynchus). In lieu of a detailed, quantified assessment it's difficult to say whether Sclerocormus was too heavy to pull itself along on land, but we can note that it is not especially big compared to the truly massive aquatic animals we have scampering over beaches today - leatherback turtles, giant pinnipeds, the odd manatee (Motani et al. 2014) and so on. Some of these animals weigh several tonnes and, if they can haul themselves out of water, maybe Sclerocormus could too.

Holotype specimen of the larger nasorostran species, Sclerocormus parviceps. From Jiang et al. (2016).

I find this question particularly interesting given how similar Sclerocormus and Cartorhynchus are in virtually all aspects (above). Is nasorostra a clade of potentially amphibious ichthyosaurs, or are we actually looking at growth stages of one oddball species? Their proportions are near identical, and they are only separated by fine details of anatomy (Jiang et al. 2016). Many proposed differences might be attributable to intraspecific variation, too. For instance, the significance of their slightly different vertebral counts is questioned through populations of living snakes, limbless lizards and fish with variable numbers of axial elements (Tibblin et al. 2016). Individually variable vertebral counts seem common in species with large numbers of axial elements, and this might have been true for ichthyosaurs. Ontogeny and scaling effects could explain other differences, including overall size, greater ossification of the postcranial skeleton, and subtle arrangements of skull bones. It can't be overlooked that these near identical species, unique in morphology in the grand scheme of ichthyosaur evolution, also happen to occur in the same member of the same formation, separated by only 14 m of strata (Jiang et al. 2016). For the time being, the identification of 'adult' skull fusion and textures in Cartorhynchus suggests they aren't the same species, but the marine reptile trait of retaining poorly fused skeletons into adulthood makes identifying adult forms especially tricky, especially with so few specimens to look at (Motani et al. 2014). It also seems worryingly difficult to tease fossil adults from juveniles without histological assessments, even with large sample sizes and good growth series (e.g. Prondvai et al. 2009). Perhaps we're waiting on histological examinations and more specimens to make a call on this.

So, walking with ichthyosaurs?

And finally, a painting: Cartorhynchus goes for a drag around a Triassic lagoon.

Putting all the strands of the amphibious Cartorhynchus hypothesis together, I don't see reason for excessive suspicion about the idea of beach hauling nasorostrans. At the core of the pro-amphibious argument is that Cartorhynchus (and perhaps, by extension, Sclerocormus) has weird anatomy that requires an explanation - it's just too different from other ichthyosauromorphs to pretend it wasn't doing something unusual, maybe even unexpected. Amphibious behaviours are an explanation that seem to chime well with provisional form-function investigations and seem a sensible hypothesis at this time. That said, we should be appropriately cautious in our interpretations of these animals: our understanding of nasorostrans is in its infancy and alternative, currently-unexplored functional hypotheses could explain their anatomy as well, or better, than the amphibious concept in future. Fingers crossed that these animals receive more dedicated functional investgiations in years to come.

Or maybe more robot turtles. Either is good with me.

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References

• Carroll, R. L., & Zhi-Ming, D. (1991). Hupehsuchus, an enigmatic aquatic reptile from the Triassic of China, and the problem of establishing relationships. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 331(1260), 131-153.
• Hsieh, S. T. T. (2010). A locomotor innovation enables water-land transition in a marine fish. PloS one, 5(6), e11197.
• Jiang, D. Y., Motani, R., Huang, J. D., Tintori, A., Hu, Y. C., Rieppel, O., ... & Zhang, R. (2016). A large aberrant stem ichthyosauriform indicating early rise and demise of ichthyosauromorphs in the wake of the end-Permian extinction. Scientific reports, 6, 26372.
• Mazouchova, N., Umbanhowar, P. B., & Goldman, D. I. (2013). Flipper-driven terrestrial locomotion of a sea turtle-inspired robot. Bioinspiration & biomimetics, 8(2), 026007.
• Motani, R., Jiang, D. Y., Chen, G. B., Tintori, A., Rieppel, O., Ji, C., & Huang, J. D. (2015). A basal ichthyosauriform with a short snout from the Lower Triassic of China. Nature, 517(7535), 485-488.
• Prondvai, E., Stein, K., Ősi, A., & Sander, M. P. (2012). Life history of Rhamphorhynchus inferred from bone histology and the diversity of pterosaurian growth strategies. PLoS One, 7(2), e31392.
• Standen, E. M., Du, T. Y., Laroche, P., & Larsson, H. C. (2016). Locomotor flexibility of Polypterus senegalus across various aquatic and terrestrial substrates. Zoology, 119(5), 447-454.
• Tibblin, P., Berggren, H., Nordahl, O., Larsson, P., & Forsman, A. (2016). Causes and consequences of intra-specific variation in vertebral number. Scientific reports, 6, 26372.

Marine reptiles behaving badly: freshwater(ish) Wealden plesiosaurs

Mother and calf Leptocleidus superstes, a freshwater leptocleidid plesiosaur, explore a swampy river inlet in Lower Cretaeceous Sussex. Of course, a real swampy scene should probably be drawn showing an impenetrable amount of suspended sediment and goo with, possibly, some plesiosaur-shaped silhouettes, but that would make for a lousy image. Prints of this image are available.

For various reasons, I've recently taken an interest in the plesiosaurs of the Wealden Supergroup. The latter will need no introduction to many readers here, being a very famous succession of Lower Cretaceous sediments which provide one of the best known dinosaur faunas in Europe, along with a diverse array of pterosaurs, crocodilians, amphibians, fish and, well, all sorts of things. The big deal about Wealden plesiosaurs is that they represent - gasp! - freshwater and brackish species rather than the marine variants we're more familiar with. Reading into these animals has been pretty fascinating and resulted in the generation of the following text and images presented here. My hope is that these will one day have a 'proper' home, but they'll have to sit here and wait for the meanwhile. The text below has been targeted at a fairly general audience and may not contain anything new for some readers, and doesn't contain citations. If, however, you're after more Wealden plesiosaurs (and who isn't?) with an authoritative twist, you'll want to be sure to check out this Tetrapod Zoology post and, of course, Adam Stuart Smith's Golden Trilobite Web Award winning-Plesiosaur Directory. If Mesozoic marine animals are your thing, you may also want to check out these posts on Ophthalmosaurus and the Oxford Clay fauna.

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Plesiosaurs are well-known aquatic Mesozoic reptiles characterised by their four large flippers and variably developed necks and heads. Their anatomy is completely unlike that of any other swimming animal, with barrel-shaped bodies tightly locked together by large, plate-like limb girdles which bore robust, powerfully muscled paddles. These flippers, highly modified limbs which are of no use on land, were entirely responsible for propelling plesiosaurs through water, their tails being relatively short and of apparent little assistance in underwater propulsion. This group, more correctly termed 'Plesiosauria’, has long been recognised as falling into two lineages: the pliosauroids and plesiosauroids. Some pliosauroids were super-predators like Liopleurodon and Pliosaurus, animals with likely stretched between 7 - 10 m in length with enormous skulls and jaws. These animals were likely top predators of many marine settings, hunting other large swimming vertebrates. Most pliosauroids bore relatively short necks but, in contrast, several plesiosauroid lineages – including famous species like Elasmosaurus, Cryptoclidus, and Plesiosaurus – developed long necks and small heads, ideal for foraging on relatively small fish and squid. Neck and skull proportions were once taken as a clear indicator of which group a given plesiosaur would belong to, but this idea has fallen from favour as the complexity of plesiosaur evolution has become apparent.

We mostly imagine these reptiles as sea- and ocean-going animals, making their occurrence in freshwater and brackish facies like those of the Wealden seem unexpected. Plesiosauria was a successful and adaptable group however, with a complex evolution that ran for 135 million years from the Late Triassic (c. 200 Ma) to the end Cretaceous (66 Ma) and included acclimatising to waters across the entire planet. Although plesiosaurs are undoubtedly mostly marine, they can be found in freshwater and brackish habitats throughout much of their history. Indeed, it seems that plesiosaurs invaded near-shore and freshwater habits on multiple occasions, although the catalyst of these invasions remains unknown. Did they thrive in environments free of large aquatic predators? Were they exploiting untapped niches and food sources? More data is required to answer these questions.

Skull reconstruction of Leptocleidus capensis, an Early Cretaceous leptocleidid from South Africa. The skull of L. superstes was probably pretty similar to this. Based on illustrations in Cruickshank (1997).

Wealden plesiosaur fossils are not particularly common. Most are isolated vertebrae, fragmentary limb bones and teeth, with only a handful of partial articulated skeletons and skulls known. These remains are important to palaeontologists because the Lower Cretaceous record of plesiosaurs is rather sparse, so Wealden plesiosaurs – rare as they are - provide an important window into this phase of plesiosaur evolution. Plesiosaur remains are span the entire Wealden stratigraphy and occur in both sub-basins, suggesting that they were long-term denizens of Wealden ecosystems. Three species of Wealden plesiosaur are currently recognised, each known by incomplete skeletons: Leptocleidus superstes (Upper Weald Clay Formation, East Sussex; also see the image above), Vectocleidus pastorum (Vectis Formation, Isle of Wight) and Hastanectes valdensis (Wadhurst Clay Formation, Hastings). Some fragmentary Wealden plesiosaur fossils clearly differ from these animals and likely represent additional, poorly known species.

Leptocleidus and Vectocleidus belong to a plesiosaur group known as Leptocleididae, an unusual lineage of Late Jurassic – Early Cretaceous plesiosaurs with necks of short or moderate length and relatively small skulls. This anatomy represents an ‘intermediate’ grade between the short-necked pliosauroids and long-necked plesiosauroids, which has caused some confusion about their relationships to other plesiosaurs. Some suggest they are a ‘relict’ lineage of early, generalised pliosauroids, but other proposal consider them derived plesiosaurids which abandoned long-necked morphologies in favour of a more generalised body plan. Whatever they are, it is noteworthy that all known leptocleidid fossils are known from freshwater, brackish or near-shore environments, suggesting they abandoned the more typical plesiosaur existence of life in open waters and spent much of their time in lakes, rivers and coastlines. This would make leptocleidids comparable to some modern seals (including Baikal seals, several types of ringed seal and harbour seals) and dolphins (such as the Irrawaddy dolphins; Baiji, Chinese river dolphin, and Tucuxi, Amazonian river dolphins) which have abandoned pelagic lifestyles or, at least, make considerable incursions up estuaries and rivers in search of food. Indeed, seals and river dolphins may be the best modern ecological analogues to Wealden leptocleidids. The skulls and jaws of these plesiosaurs were equipped with large jaw muscles and conical, partially serrated teeth, ideally suited to feeding on a small bodied prey. Their diet probably mostly comprised fish, supplemented by opportunistic taking of other, small swimming animals. The four-flippered propulsion system of plesiosaurs may have been ideally suited to navigating complex and tight underwater habits in pursuit of cryptic prey, permitting for excellent manoeuvrability as well as bursts of speed.

Skeletal reconstructions of mother and foetal Polycotylus latippinus, polycotylid plesiosaurs which are not a million miles away, phylogenetically speaking, from leptocleidids. Was this strategy of birthing solitary, large calves found in leptocleidids - and other plesiosaurs for that matter - as well? From O'Keefe and Chiappe 2011; image from here.

At least Leptocleidus was a fairly large animal for the Wealden waterways, attaining body lengths of around 3 m. This size may have dissuaded attacks from even the largest Wealden aquatic and semiaquatic predators, but the same cannot be said for their calves. ‘Calves’ is an appropriate word here: fossils of Late Cretaceous plesiosaurs (which happen to be closely related to leptocleidids) show that at least some plesiosaurs did not lay eggs like many other reptiles, but instead gave birth to a solitary, large and very well developed baby. This reproductive strategy is extremely similar to that of large mammals but is virtually unheard of in reptiles. Although live births are known in many modern lizards and snakes, only a few modern reptiles (various types of skinks) are known to produce a single, large and highly developed offspring. The development of such reproductive strategies in plesiosaurs is therefore rather remarkable (though we must be mindful that we do not know how common this strategy was across Plesiosauria). Both mammals and reptiles that invest heavily in a single offspring are highly social and engage in maternal care, which may indicate that adult plesiosaurs did the same. Perhaps Wealden leptocleidids protected their young from predators, warding off attacks from marauding goniopholidids crocodilians and other plesiosaurs until they were large enough to look after themselves.

Hastanectes valdensis: a possible pliosaur which, even at only 2 m long, is good reason not to paddle in Wealden waterways. Especially if you're a small crocodile.

Such predatory attempts may have been attempted by our third Wealden plesiosaur, Hastanectes (above). Some have suggested that Hastanectes is a pliosaurid rather than a leptocleidid, and closely related to the large, powerful members of this lineage with short-necks and large skulls armed with tusk-like teeth. If so, Hastanectes may represent a small (2 m long) version of these predators. Interestingly, no Hastanectes specimens currently known represent fully-grown animals, suggesting it may have grown somewhat larger. Even at 2 m in length, such a pliosaur would be keen predator of small and medium-sized swimming creatures in Wealden waters, perhaps taking not only fish but also regularly hunting other reptiles. This interpretation of Hastanectes has not gone unchallenged, however: some very recent studies have suggested it represents another Wealden leptocleidid.

A fourth, and largely mysterious type of Wealden plesiosaur is represented by very scant remains indeed. A solitary vertebra from the Hastings Group hints at the presence of a long-necked plesiosauroid within the Wealden. Exactly what sort of plesiosaur this represents however, and how it may have functioned within the Wealden palaeoecosystem, is unknown at present.

References

• Cruickshank, A. R. I. (1997). A lower Cretaceous pliosauroid from South Africa. Annals of the South African Museum 105, 207–226.
• O’Keefe, F. R. & Chiappe, L. M. (2011). Viviparity and K-selected life history in a Mesozoic marine plesiosaur (Reptilia, Sauropterygia). Science 333, 870-873.