EVOLUTION OF SEA REPTILES

EVOLUTION OF SEA REPTILES

-250 million years:The mother of extinctions,the Permian extinction, the most catastrophic extinction in the history of the planet.Some animals hide in burrows,others climb mountains,but we will see the reptiles that go in the water.They swam for some 2 million generations and then is the end of the extinction.-230 million years:But after 2 million generations of swimming they have scaly membranes between their fingers.Tanystropheus is 6m long and have a record,the longest neck for his body size.Nothosaur is the top predator of this oceans.Ichthyosaurs,like Cymbospondylus,Shoniaurus and Mixosaurus are demanded  the seas,using their tales like a fish to move in the water.-160 million years:Now the ichthyosaurs exists but they don’t rule,a new kind of marine reptiles has arrived,the plesiosaurs,Kimmerosaurus,Elasmosaurus and Styxosaurus are the new kings of the seas,they use their 4 flippers to ‘’fly’’into the water.-90 million years:The ichthyosaurs are all extinct,the plesiosaurs live,but the kings are mosasaurs.They moved and ate like a snake 4 small hand like fins and a super long tale.-65,5 million years:The mosasaurs are still the kings and plesiosaurs exist,but then a great cataclysm from out of space is coming,an asteroid 12 miles across slammed in to Earth and march the end of the age of sea,flying and land reptiles.In their shadows the sharks survived and became once again after 165 million years the kings of the seas,until today.

STRANGE CROCODILIANS

BIZZARE CROCS

In this programme we will see the most bizarre crocodilians that ever existed.There are all in the Mesozoic eon,again by time.First in the Jurassic period,in the European seas a marine crocodile lived,Metriorhynchus 5m from nose to tail but is not heavier than 2 humans.But crocodile in the sea,how he can do it?The answer is quit simple,he evolved complex lungs to live in the water like 300 other marine reptiles.Today the only sea croc is the saltwater crocodile in Australia.The next croc lived at the Early Cretaceous period in Africa,Sarcosuchus which means flesh eating crocodile,good name for a crocodile that needs 90kg of flesh evary day,at 12m and 4 tonnes it is the king of crocodiles.It hunted Sauropods the biggest creatures that ever existed.The next is the most bizarre croc ever,it’s a theropod crocodilian that ever walk planet Earth,N.Africa,119-93.5 million years ago Spinosaurus hunted the vast system of rivers and swamps that circled a desert,but why rivers? It’s a piscivore ,a fish eater.In 2010 a Spinosaurus skull was put to a CT Scanner,it revealed that is a creature that have its nose up its head to breath when it is in the water,but at the start of the head it have strange holes,like crocodiles, there are for sensing prey.But  94 million years ago the climate change,sea levels began to rise and the rivers and swamps that Spinosaurus hunted were lost,whiout them Spinosaurus became vulnerable,93.5 million years ago the last fish eating dinosaur disappeared from the fossil record.Today the strangest croc is the saltwater crocodile in Australia,but they are maybe many to come.

MONSTERS WITHOUT SPINE

TERRYFING INVERTEBRATES

Throw out the history of our planet we see thousands of terrible vertebrates but in this article we will do a trip in the world of terrible invertebrates.Invertebrates are the animals that haven’t spine.We will do it by time periods.Our first station is the Cambrian period,and the invertebrate that we will see is the king of those seas,Anomalacaris Earth’s first super predator,this 2m long monster owe his success to a remarkable evolutionary land mark,eyes,they may look bizarre but there aren’t unique,many predators in the Cambrian seas have also evolved eyes,and saw their prey.Anomalacaris was disappeared 500 million years ago by mysterious reason.The next station in this formidable  navigation is the next time period,the Ordovician.Here there are 2 killers,Orthocone  and Eurypterds.Eurypterids are arthropods in the family of scorpions.But they haven’t get on land already,they lived in the water and they haven’t big sting and small pincers,they have the opposite.They killed by claws in their pincers,they have 4 couples of legs to walk and flippers for swimming,a curly sting for fighting,a very small mouth to eat and powerful pincers.The claws in their pincers are also used as a spade to find their favourite food,hiding Trilobites.The other predator is a 11m long squid,the G.Orthocone.It catch it’s favourite food,Eurypterids [that are just 1m in length] by their giant tentacles,catch and then travel them in a sharp mouth to by eaten by this beast,but the biggest weapon that they used is a muscular tube that control the gases and water inside their cone,so they can go deep or sallow,fast or slow.Next invertebrate is from the Silurian period,Pterygotus is the titan of sea scorpions,3m long and at the size of an alligator,it’s the king of this seas.It’s a Eurypterid so he have the shame weapons with a Eurypterid and hunting tactics but with a change,they haven’t stings,suddenly they disappeared 410 million years ago with a mass extinction that ends the Silurian era.Next is the Devonian era but in this period there aren’t killer bugs so we go to the golden age of arthropods ,the Carboniferous era.But why is this the best period of arthropods?It’s because the oxygen levels were much higher than today’s.Today in our atmosphere is 21% oxygen,but in the Carboniferous era were 35%.Mesothelea spider is at the size of a human head,it’s an ambush predator,hiding on her underground burrow and then strike it’s prey,small lizards,our ancestors in this arthropod kingdom.The last invertebrate is the biggest arthropod ever,the Arhtropleura  hunted at the forest floor,it covered it’s body with trees and strike when it sense movement strike in spiders,dragonflies,reptiles and even amphibians.Arthropleura was 4m long and 250kg in weight.The deadliest invertebrates were only at the past but if the Oxygen levels start to go up and the arthropods be giants again, what will happened?

TITANOBOA,KING OF THE WORLD

A WORLD,RULED BY A SNAKE

A lost world of giants,60 million years old, ruled by a slithering reptile. In December 2002 in Columbia, a fossil vertebrate was let from the ground. It was the biggest snake’s vertebrate of all time. Even bigger than a vertebrate from a Egypt snake,the Gigantophis a 11m. snake that hunts 46 million years ago the swamps of Egypt in primitive elephants. But the size of this vertebrate from Columbia was double than the Egyptian king, this was sure the largest snake that have ever lived.It’s DNA was same with a Python’s one,so scientist called this snake Titanoboa.10 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs it’s one of the Earth’s most mysterious periods in her history,it’s called Paleocene epoch.S.America was ruled by Titanoboa,the other continents  were ruled by 3metres tall birds.Titanoboa was 15m. long and dosen’t needs poisonous venom to kill,it killed by constriction and with sharp teeth thrashing by it’s jaws it ate crocodiles whole and with complex lungs it can live to land and water.They give birth in to live young out of the water and they are probably 100 eggs inside the mothers,youngs are over 1m in length,like some modern adult snakes. The snake’s mouth open over 90 destinies and then,splitting a part,so the mouths are so open it can easily swallowed an alligator whole.At 3 tonnes Titanoboa was the largest snake ever.But the difficult part was the digestive of it’s prey.Asset filled it’s stomach and melt 0,5 tonnes of flesh,bones and skin of the alligator.They couldn’t ate turtles.For Titanoboa this is a long process,so an alligator could be the only meal [of a snake this size] a year.But why Titanoboa get so big?The answer is because the snakes are cold-blooded creatures,and when you are cold-blooded you grow by the temperature around you and in S.America 60 million years ago the climate was very warmer and tropic.But despite it’s success Titanoboa disappeared by global cooling.But we know that Titanoboa existed and lived on our planet as the biggest snake ever.