Prepare to be amazed by this prehistoric marine reptile! Atopodentatus, Earth’s oldest herbivorous filter-feeding marine reptile, is about to astound you
Atopodentatus was a hammerheaded herbivore, new fossil find shows Find changes previous view of Atopodentatus unicus , revealing the 244-million-year-old creature to be the earliest known plant-eating marine reptile An ancient creature with a skull the shape of a vacuum attachment could have been one of the first plant-eating marine reptile s, researchers say. Dug up in Luoping County in the Yunnan province of China, the newly discovered fossils of the sea-dwelling creature Atopodentatus unicus, thought to have lived around 244 million years ago, suggest it had a “hammerhead” skull, with two very different sets of teeth that allowed it to feed on underwater plant matter. The findings overthrow previous conclusions drawn from the first Atopodentatus fossil reported in 2014 that suggested the creature, thought to be between 2.5 and three metres in length, had a drooping snout with a vertical, zipper-like arrangement of teeth. This peculiar feature, the res...