Ancient Sea Reptiles

Ancient Sea Reptiles
Darren Naish
Smithsonian Book, 2023
ISBN 9781588347275

Appears to have originally been published in UK by Natural History Museum, London.

This is an outstanding book for any amateur interested in Mesozoic marine vertebrates. It’s lavishly illustrated, in contradiction to the trend of books not having any illustrations apparently due to copyright concerns. It’s also informative. Darren Naish is not afraid to mention everything relevant.

He covers paleogeographical effects on evolution, like the breakup of Pangaea beginning at the end of the Triassic, and things like Triassic/Jurassic Earth having a “Boreal Ocean” at the north pole basically encircled by continent.

Above the Western Interior Seaway of North America, showing how it connected to wider oceans.

Naish covers categories of things not usually appearing in popular books.

Above, a ternary plot showing marine reptile tooth shape. This is from Tooth Morphology and Prey Preferences of Mesozoic Marine Reptiles, Judy A. Massare, 1987. Usually, popular books state something like “teeth indicating feeding on mollusks”, and do not elaborate. Naish uses this diagram to both refer teeth to type of prey, and to show some convergent evolution in groups of marine reptile with obviously separate ancestry.

Naish does not shy away from well-informed speculation about a “marine reptile superclade” including Sauropterygians and Ichthyosaurs, and talks a little about a possible Permian origin of Ichthyosaurs or at least the common ancestor of a putative superclade.

Naish does claim that evolution of Ichthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs and Mosasaurs is “complex”. This may be the book’s big flaw. At least he gives cladograms that show potential alternatives, like above.

The book has an exhaustive enumeration of mesozoic marine reptiles. Not just ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs and sea turtles, but [thalattosuchians]({{ ref “/posts/thalattosuchians.md” >}}) aquatic rhynchycephalians, and goofy Triassic forms like huphesuchians. Naish includes Tanystropheus as a marine reptile.