Placodont marine reptile — Placodus gigas

Geologic period: Middle Triassic

Age: Middle Triassic.

Feeding: Durophagous — adapted for crushing hard food such as shell-bearing marine organisms.

Locomotion: Aquatic and nearshore swimming.

Body plan: Robust marine reptile with a broad skull, powerful jaws and enlarged crushing teeth.

Evidence: Massive crushing teeth and tooth replacement patterns provide direct functional evidence for hard-food processing.

Why it matters: Placodus shows how quickly reptiles diversified into specialized marine feeding niches after the Permian extinction.

Plain Language Identity: A Middle Triassic placodont marine reptile specialized for crushing hard-shelled prey.

What You Are Looking At: A cast representing the skull of Placodus gigas.

Defense Or Attack: Its most specialized equipment was its crushing dentition rather than cutting predator teeth.

Ecosystem: Middle Triassic shallow marine environments.

Preservation: Visitor object is a skull cast.

Open Questions: Specific prey species should not be assigned unless direct gut-content or associated evidence supports them.

Source Urls: https://naturalhistory.si.edu/visit/virtual-tour/current-exhibits/deep-time-virtual-tour-fossil-list; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24517163/; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35645412/

Enrichment Method: SAGE curated research pass; title and scientific name matched; chronology and lineage distinctions retained; evidence separated from inference

Scientific name: Placodus gigas

Evidence / representation: comparative_taxon_visual

comparative_taxon_visual

Rise of the Dinosaurs: A New World After Catastrophe.

Media license: CC BY-SA 4.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0