Troll_Man

WWD: Sachicasaurus vitae

Added 2023-05-26 10:30:14 +0000 UTC

This is the pliosaur which appeared for eight seconds in the episode as the Ornithocheirus crossed the Atlantic. It's identified in supplementary materials as Plesiopleurodon, but there's just one problem with that: the episode is set in the Early Cretaceous, 127 million years ago, while Plesiopleurodon lived during the Late Cretaceous, 98 million years ago. I assume that they chose that particular taxon because it was considered a close relative of Liopleurodon at the time, and was thought to strongly resemble it, so that made it a good candidate for a cheap palette swap. However, even that aspect has become outdated, as Plesiopleurodon has since been reclassified as a polycotylid, which were short-necked pleisosaurs unrelated to pliosaurs (it should also be noted that all short-necked plesiosaurs were considered pliosaurs at the time, only being discarded in 2002).

So I've swapped it for an actual pliosaur which approximately lived at the time. It's not known from the locale, or anywhere too close, but I considered it the best candidate since big marine animals in modern times tend to have very large geographical ranges anyway (since there aren't as many physical boundaries), so a species like this having a big range isn't unlikely. Especially because both the coast of Western Europe and Colombia would have bordered the young Atlantic at the time, the two locations were much closer together back then, and when the animal is as large as this.

With a length of over ten metres and weighing nearly fourteen metric tonnes, this was one of the largest and most powerful reptilian macropredators ever known to have lived on Earth (this isn't like the ultra-fragmentary giant Liopleurodon or other dubious mega-pliosaurs, since Sachicasaurus is known from a nearly complete skeleton). It's nearly twice as heavy as every other member of the episode's cast put together. And it only appears in the episode for eight seconds!