Review and photos by Ravonium, edited by Suspsy
In 2014, a group of Chinese paleontologists working in Yunnan Province discovered a near complete skeleton of Atopodentatus, a new genus (and likely, lineage) of Sauropterygia (the main group of Mesozoic marine reptiles) with an odd and somewhat creepy skull unlike that of any other known vertebrate.
The Middle Triassic began a mere five million years after the end-Permian extinction. On land, forests had finally staggered back from the destruction. Insects, mammal relatives, and sauropsids started to diversify into new–or sometimes rediscovered–morphologies. In the oceans, ray-finned fishes and coelacanths thrived, and some sauropsids returned to the sea.
Although I’ve reviewed a number of these Yowie figures there’s one above all others that I’ve been wanting to obtain, the Atopodentatus, and I guess the 12th times the charm! Although listed as “common” on the Yowie rarity chart it had frustratingly eluded me for two months.
CollectA has long been at the forefront of producing obscure toys of prehistoric animals but by and large they’ve all been tetrapods; four legged vertebrates and their descendants. This includes a variety of dinosaurs, pterosaurs, marine reptiles, and mammals. But this year CollectA has raised the bar and released four prehistoric invertebrate figures: a trilobite (Redlichia rex), Orthoceras, Pleuroceras ammonite, and a belemnite.
At this point I think it’s fair to say that a new large-format pterosaur is among the highlights of CollectA’s new figure announcements. They don’t quite come every year, but they do seem to be coming more frequently. This year’s choice was one of the earliest pterosaurs, the peculiar Caviramus schesaplanensis from the Rhaetian (Late Triassic) of what would become Eurasia.
The first specimen of Caviramus was only a broken lower jaw which showed evidence of heavy teeth and an unusually low joint.
“Today we shall be embarking on an exciting and educational journey through the amazing world of Lego dinosaurs.
This dinosaur is one of my absolute favorites in the collection. The Coelophysis by Kaiyodo is special in several ways. First, there are only a few figures from the Triassic–the dawn of the dinosaurs.
