Solar sails and nebulae

ancientbeasts:

Nothosaurus:

Epoch: Triassic

Size: 4 metres long

The warm Triassic ocean was home to a great diversity of aquatic life, a lot of which were marine reptiles, from the apex predator Cymbospondylus to the bizarre long necked tanystropheus. Nothosaurs were part of this diversity, and at 4m long with a mouthful of interlocking teeth; a big part if you were a fish. The nothosaur lifestyle was most likely similar to that of a seal. This is because although it is clearly a marine organism, it still had traits which belonged to a terrestrial land animal i.e. it’s limbs. It that regard it physically looked more like a crocodile. The most accurate description I could give is a cross between a crocodillian and a plesiosaur. It’s because of these still well developed limbs that some suggest it spent a great deal of time on land resting and possibly even hunting, rather than all of its time in the water. But it was in the water that the nothosaurus was more at home, using a combination of its tail and its webbed feet, it would have been able to propel and manoeuvre itself through the water very quickly and gracefully. Then using its outward facing, interlocking teeth it would have snapped up fish with considerable ease.   

(via theyllcallmethecontender)