Atychodracon
Name:
Atychodracon
(Unfortunate dragon).
Phonetic: At-e-ko-dray-kon.
Named By: Adam S. Smith - 2015.
Synonyms: Rhomaleosaurus megacephalus,
Plesiosaurus megacephalus.
Classification: Chordata, Reptilia,
Sauropterygia, Plesiosauria, PLiosauroidea, Rhomaleosauridae?
Species: A. megacephalus
(type).
Diet: Carnivore/Piscivore.
Size: Roughly about 4.9 meters long for the
holotype.
Known locations: England - Blue Lias Formation.
Time period: Late Triassic/Early Jurassic.
Fossil representation: Holotype destroyed, but
detailed casts of the original have survived.
Atychodracon
was originally named as a species of Plesiosaurus
back in 1846 when
the first specimen was described by Samuel Stuchbury. At this time
Plesiosaurus had fast become a wastebasket taxon
with any fossils
remotely similar to Plesiosaurus being almost
immediately attributed to
the genus as a new species. Many former species of Plesiosaurus
have
now been re-described as either belonging to other genera, or even
as their own genus, but the destruction of what should have been the
holotype of Atychodracon in World War Two slowed
down the discovery.
This
destruction happened on the 24th November 1940 when German
bombers hit the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery. Fortunately
however, before this bombing raid occurred a series of finely
detailed casts were made of the holotype and stored in the Natural
History Museum, London, and it is from these that the truth of this
marine reptile has been learned. in 1994 Plesiosaurus
megacephalus was credited as a species of Rhomaleosaurus
by A. R.
I. Cruickshank, but it was later still in 2015 when Adam S.
Smith re-classified Rhomaleosaurus megacephalus as
a whole new genus,
Atychodracon megacephalus.
As
a rhomaleosaurid pliosaur,
Atychodracon would have looked somewhere
in between the long-necked, small headed plesiosaurs,
and the
short-necked large headed pliosaurid pliosaurs that would become common
later in the Jurassic. Like with its rhomaleosaurid cousins,
Atychodracon would have had a proportionately
larger head (in fact
the species name megacephalus means ’big
head’), while still
having a longish neck. Because of this Atychodracon
was probably
still capable of hunting for fish, but may have also tackled larger
marine animals such as the juveniles of plesiosaurs.
Aside
from the original casts, a referred individual colloquially known as
the ‘Barrow Kipper’ (after the town of Barrow) is also attributed
to Atychodracon.
Further reading
- Description of a new species of Plesiosaurus,
in the Museum of
the Bristol Institution. - Quarterly Journal of the Geological
Society 2: 411–417.- Samuel Stutchbury - 1846.
- Cranial anatomy of the Lower Jurassic pliosaur Rhomaleosaurus
megacephalus (Stutchbury) (Reptilia: Plesiosauria).
-
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series
B, 343:247-260. - A. R. I. Cruickshank - 1994a.
- Reassessment of ‘Plesiosaurus’ megacephalus
(Sauropterygia:
Plesiosauria) from the Triassic-Jurassic boundary, UK. -
Palaeontologia Electronica 18 (1): 1–20. - Adam S.
Smith - 2015.
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