Extinct Creatures-- Tanystropheus (Patreon)

Here we have our next Triassic Weirdo, Tanystropheus, an archosauromorph (closely related to archosaurs but not actually an archosaur) with an exceptionally long neck. It dwelled on the coast, using its neck to nab fish that were farther from shore.

Folks have been arguing for a while about what Tanystropheus' lifestyle would have been-- some people though it was an early marine reptile, living primarily in the ocean like a proto-plesiosaur. But that's been pretty much disproven. Mark Witton has a wonderfully informative post about Tanystropheus in which he explains the various theories and why Tanystropheus was most likely a land creature.

The gist of it is that Tanystropheus is lacking a lot of the traits you'd expect to see in a marine animal, but shares many traits with other long-necked land-dwelling animals such as giraffe, sauropods, and long-necked pterosaurs-- the main trait being an emphasis on lightening the neck. For instance, all these land-dwelling animals have fewer vertebrae than you'd expect-- giraffe only have seven, and Tanystropheus only has 12-13. This makes the neck lighter and easier to hold up outside the water. For contrast, marine creatures with long necks tend to have more vertebrae. Elasmosaurus, a plesiosaur with one of the longest necks, has 72 vertebrae!

There are a lot of other anatomical reasons besides just the neck, but that is a pretty prominent feature of Tanystropheus, so it was worth discussing. Anyway, so that's this guy. A pretty cool guy.