A giant chelonioid turtle from the late Cretaceous of Morocco with a suction feeding apparatus unique among tetrapods.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Secondary adaptation to aquatic life occurred independently in several amniote lineages, including reptiles during the Mesozoic and mammals during the Cenozoic. These evolutionary shifts to aquatic environments imply major morphological modifications, especially of the feeding apparatus. Mesozoic (250-65 Myr) marine reptiles, such as ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurid squamates, crocodiles, and turtles, exhibit a wide range of adaptations to aquatic feeding and a broad overlap of their tooth morphospaces with those of Cenozoic marine mammals. However, despite these multiple feeding behavior convergences, suction feeding, though being a common feeding strategy in aquatic vertebrates and in marine mammals in particular, has been extremely rarely reported for Mesozoic ma

SUBMITTER: Bardet N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3708935 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature