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.
