Dinos and Fandoms

Beautyful cascade of three generations of purple fluorite crystals from Wuyi fluorite ore field, Wuyi County, Jinhua, Zhejiang, China. 77x48x33mm

📷 Fine mineral photography

Inostrancevia and Scutosaurus

Edit 3: This is apparently NOT a mistake. This is the actual song. The poll is coming back, if you voted feel free to revote :). (I don't usually listen to the songs before voting so I can vote fairly too, so whoever did this: you got me so good!)

I've got a weird little guy for you all today! Its name is Gerrothorax (plated chest) and it is a genus of temnospondyl from the triassic period (specifically middle to late triassic)

The type species is Gerrothorax pulcherrimus

Fossil from the Naturmuseum Senckenburg in Frankfurt, Germany

Despite calling it little, its actually about 1 meter in length.

This is a flat beast, and its flattened body with eyes on the top of its skull suggests that it lived at the bottom of freshwater water bodies like lakes. It would have caught prey by lifting its head, and may have even used suction feeding.

Unlike other temnospondyls, gerrothorax retains its gills into adulthood! This means it would have been mostly aquatic rather than semi-aquatic!

Paleoart by Victor Silva