Biology:Omphalosauridae
Omphalosauridae is an extinct family of Ichthyosauriformes that lived during the Early to Mid Triassic period of Europe, North America, and Asia. This family is currently composed of three genera; Cartorhynchus, Omphalosaurus and Sclerocormus.[1][2][3]
Ecology
Fossils of omphalosaurids have been found in Western North America, Asia (China) and Europe of Svalbard and Bavarian Alps. Members of this family almost always exclusively inhabited open-water habitats. The sole exception is a jaw fossil that has been uncovered from Mid-Triassic shallow marine carbonates of Southern Poland. However this occurrence is likely a stray carcass not representing a shallow-water member. Nonetheless, they had a wide range likely due to their unique feeding behavior.[1]
They may have potentially played an important role in the recovery of ecosystems after the End-Permian mass extinction. They were apart of the explosive radiation event of reptiles into the ocean during the Early Triassic during the recovery of pelagic ecosystems after the End-Permian mass extinction.[1] This family, along with early ichthyosauromorphs groups, would quickly go extinct at the Early-Middle Triassic boundary. This was likely due to environmental perturbation after the End-Permian extinction likely involving redox fluctuations, changes in sea levels and volcanism.[2]
Feeding
The skull anatomy of omphalosaurids such as Sclerocormus show unique feeding apparatuses. It is likely that they were durophagous meaning that they were able to consume hard-shelled and/or exoskeleton-bearing organisms. They likely feed on pelagic invertebrates, especially ammonoids. Omphalosaurids, based on morphofunctional analysis of the jaws, likely occupied the same morphospace of marine turtles probably with a unique grinding mechanism.[1]
Taxonomy
The family was established in 1906 by John Campbell Merriam, an American paleontologist and conservationist.[4] Omphalosaurids have been reported over a century ago but fossils of this group were mostly jaw fragments with few specimens preserving partial cranial and postcranial remains. Due to their fragmentary remains, this family is enigmatic with its phylogenetic placement being uncertain. Due to this uncertainty, this family has been placed as the closest relatives to rhynchosaurs, placodonts and ichthyosaurs. Modern phylogenetic analysis now unambiguously places omphalosaurids as early diverging ichthyosauriforms.[1][3]
The clade Nasorostra erected by Jiang et al. 2016 seems to have been a taxonomic synonym of Omphalosauridae. This clade was composed of Sclerocormus and Cartorhynchus. The synonymy was done after phylogenetic analysis after the discovery of Sclerocormus which placed this family as a early divergent group of ichthyosauriforms.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedQiao2022 - ↑ 2.0 2.1 Jiang, Da-Yong; Motani, Ryosuke; Huang, Jian-Dong; Tintori, Andrea; Hu, Yuan-Chao; Rieppel, Olivier; Fraser, Nicholas C.; Ji, Cheng et al. (2016). "A large aberrant stem ichthyosauriform indicating early rise and demise of ichthyosauromorphs in the wake of the end-Permian extinction" (in en). Scientific Reports 6 (1). doi:10.1038/srep26232. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 4876504. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep26232.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Motani, Ryosuke; Jiang, Da-Yong; Chen, Guan-Bao; Tintori, Andrea; Rieppel, Olivier; Ji, Cheng; Huang, Jian-Dong (2015). "A basal ichthyosauriform with a short snout from the Lower Triassic of China" (in en). Nature 517 (7535): 485–488. doi:10.1038/nature13866. ISSN 1476-4687. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13866.
- ↑ Tichy, Gottfried (1995). "Ein früher, durophager Ichthyosaurier (Omphalosauridae) aus der Mitteltrias der Alpen". Geologisch-Paläontologische Mitteilungen.
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