Dorset Holiday
Summary: In the Dorset Coast of England in the Charmouth Mudstone Formation, 190 million years ago in the Early Jurassic. A Mother Plesiosaurus gives birth to a young female who explores her Dorset coastal home and learns the ways of being a plesiosaurus.
Cast: Plesiosaurus (Focus), Attenborosaurus, Archaeonectrus, Thaumatodracon, Asteroceras, Echioceras, Promicroceras, Uptonia, Ichthyosaurus annigae, Dorsetichthys, Chondrosteus, Dapedium, Leptonectes, Turnersuchus, Myriacanthus, Dimorphodon, and Scelidosaurus.
It starts with Thomas behind a fossil display of a pregnant fossil marine reptile.``The Marine reptiles were the true sea monsters of their time in the oceans of the Mesozoic, one recognizable is this display of a plesiosaur." He even brings out a model cast. "Plesiosaurs were an order or clade of extinct Mesozoic marine reptiles that first appeared in the latest Triassic Period, about 203 million years ago. They became especially common during the Jurassic Period, thriving until their disappearance due to the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous Period, about 66 million years ago. They had a worldwide oceanic distribution, and some species at least partly inhabited freshwater environments. Plesiosaurs had broad flat bodies and short tails. Their limbs had evolved into four long flippers, which were powered by strong muscles attached to wide bony plates formed by the shoulder girdle and the pelvis. The flippers made a flying movement through the water. Plesiosaurs breathe air, and bore live young; there are indications that they were warm-blooded. This fossil display belongs to a pregnant plesiosaur known as a Polycotylus, an adult with the bones of a fetal plesiosaur in its abdomen. Some plesiosaurs gave birth to live young about 40% the length of the mother — equivalent to a human mother giving birth to a six-year-old child. A study took bone samples from the mother and fetus to illustrate bone development in plesiosaurs, the results showed that plesiosaur fetal bone grew extremely quickly, sacrificing bone strength for growth rate. plesiosaurs gave birth to live young and new evidence of rapid fetal bone growth resulted that the babies were poor swimmers and likely required maternal parental care for protection. There were two main morphological types. Some species had long necks and small heads; these were relatively slow and caught small sea animals like Elasmosaurus. Other species, some of them reaching a length of up to seventeen meters, with a short neck and a large head; the pliosaurs who were apex predators, fast hunters of large prey. And there was the namesake of the family, Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus. It is distinguishable by its small head, long and slender neck, broad turtle-like body, short tail, and two pairs of large, elongated paddles, the first person to discover it was a woman, early paleontologist, and fossil hunter named Mary Anning."
. . . . .
The setting changes to the Dorset Coast, England in the 1800s, showing a woman in a green Victorian dress with red linings, a red scarf, black hair, and a yellow bonnet strolling along the shore with a basket full of seashells as she spoke in a British accent. "Hello, I am Mary Anning and I have walked along the seasides of Dorsets searching for seashells to sell to people, but some finds are quite out of the ordinary. It was December 1823 when I discovered the first complete skeleton of Plesiosaurus. It was one of the first of the "antediluvian reptiles" to be discovered and excited great interest in 19th-century England. It was so-named ("near lizard") by William Conybeare and Henry De la Beche, to indicate that it was more like a normal reptile than Ichthyosaurus, which had also been found here just a few years earlier. Since the seaside people including myself have always walked on and spent our holidays would never imagine how this place used to be back in the Early Jurassic, what was the world of the Plesiosaurus looked like back then?"
. . . . .
This is the Dorset Coast of England in Great Britain in the Charmouth Mudstone Formation, during the early Jurassic, 190 million years ago. Before it was full of rocky cliffs and rock arches back then, it was a seaside environment with forests full of trees, ferns, and cycads in the region close to the coastline, the United Kingdom and most of Europe back then was mostly underwater with series of archipelago islands as the only forms of land dotted across the ocean. Along this Jurassic coast is an estuary, a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open Tethys sea. Since Estuaries are a transition between freshwater and saltwater environments, they are subject both to marine influences such as tides, waves, and the influx of saline water and to fluvial influences such as flows of fresh water and sediment. The mixing of seawater and freshwater provides high levels of nutrients both in the water column and in sediment, making estuaries among the most productive natural habitats in the world. Estuaries filter out sediments and pollutants from rivers and streams before they flow into the ocean, providing cleaner waters, and they are often called the "nurseries of the sea" because numerous animal species rely on estuaries for nesting and breeding. Many creatures from shellfish, fish, and in this case reptiles depend on these estuaries for survival.
In the open mouth of the estuary, several blobs surface from the water, and back these are marine reptiles known as the Plesiosaurus. This family pod has come to this estuary for a very special time as they swim further toward the center, one of the females begins to contract and move struggling to push something out. Then a figure comes out of her womb followed by blood, it's a baby. The Plesiosaurus females have come here to these estuaries to give birth to their young, since the young are poor swimmers, they grow up in the estuary under the eyes of the adults before they are fit and strong enough to swim in the open ocean. The mother helps this baby female swim up to the surface and once there takes her first breath. She will learn to navigate her Coastal home under the protection of her mother and the pod.
A few months have passed and the baby is growing up fast. She is learning from her mother where to find and how to avoid danger. On the shorelines of the estuary some land creatures come to drink from the water or feed on salt-enriched plants, Pterosaurs like these small Dimorphodons on the shore banks drink, bath in the water, and look for anything that washes up on the shore to feed upon, and feeding among the ferns and cycads are these armored dinosaurs, Scelidosaurus. This herbivore dinosaur belongs to a family clade known as Thyreophora in the future, it will give rise to famous armored dinosaurs like Ankylosaurus and Stegosaurus.
The Plesiosaurus pod swims past some close relatives, about 4.3 m (14 ft) these plesiosaurs are known as Attenborosaurus named after the famous British Broadcaster and Biologist whose voice has been heard in many Nature Documentaries, Sir David Attenborough. These plesiosaurs are part of another family known as Pliosaurs and more pliosaurs belong to the family Rhomaleosauridae, Thaumatodracon, andArchaeonectrus, which was a relatively small plesiosaur, measuring 3.67 m (12.0 ft) long. They are currently shifting the sands with their heads searching for mollusks like snails and clams which they mostly feed on, but they'll also take belemnites, fish, and other prey as well. They also swallow smooth stones too, based on fossil stomach contents of related plesiosaurs known as gastroliths, the stones help grind up their food and provide basalt buoyancy in the water.
Swimming in the benthic floor of the estuary is a fish known as Chondrosteus. This Ray-finned fish is remotely related to sturgeons and paddlefishes. Similar to sturgeons, the jaws of Chondrosteus were free from the rest of the skull and its scale cover was reduced to the upper lobe of the caudal fin like in paddlefish. Like the paddlefish, since it lacks teeth on their jaws, they are ram suspension filter feeders with a diet that consists primarily of zooplankton, and occasionally small insects, insect larvae, and small fish. Another fish is a chimera, a cartilaginous fish closely related to sharks and rays which have been around since the early Carboniferous, this one resembling a guitarfish is a Myriacanthus. It is normally a bottom feeder that buries itself in mud or sand and eats worms, crabs, and clams close to the beach, coastline, or estuaries. The young plesiosaurus swimming by shifting the sand with her snout disturbs one out of the sand as it swims away.
Another shoal of fish present feeding on the urchins and mussels off from the rocks is Dapedium. various species ranged from 9 to 40 centimeters (3.5 to 15.7 in) long, and all had an oval to the near-circular body with skin covered with thick, rhomboid, ganoid enamel-like scales. The skull was armored with bony dermal plates, which were especially plentiful in the orbital region. These bones bore irregular tubercles. The small pectoral and pelvic fins, along with the extended dorsal and anal fins formed a functional unit with the tail. The tail was short and stout, providing the power for a sudden change in direction while the fish was swimming. The upper jaw of Dapedium was moveable and could protrude from the mouth, enabling a broader gape to capture larger prey. The strong and pointed teeth dentition suggests that Dapedium was durophagous, feeding on hard-shelled invertebrates, like mussels and sea urchins.
Today is a special day because night it's the spawning event of the ammonites, ammonites are shelled mollusk cephalopods related to squids, octopus, and cuttlefish that live in shells for protection, and they have tentacles to help filter feed plankton, and distant relative alive today is the Nautilus. These are Asteroceras true star ammonites, they are fast-moving nektonic carnivores with a shell reaching a diameter of about 90 centimeters (35 in), and the smaller common Promicroceras, in modern times, Fossil shops in the Dorset coast commonly sell cleaned and polished Promicroceras. There are also Echioceras with shells that can reach a diameter of about 4–6 centimeters (1.6–2.4 in). The narrow and broad evolute shell is reinforced by fine ribs on inner whorls, progressively becoming stronger, straight, and distinct, the Shells are evolute with an open umbilicus; strongly ribbed, ribs flattened on the venter, and with small spines without distinct tubercles. But the biggest ammonite was Uptonia which in some individuals grew to be fairly large and these ammonites are a perfect source of food for marine reptiles like plesiosaurs.
The young female watches her mother as they lay down on the sand floor with their necks up and jaws wide open, one of their hunting strategies is to lie in wait for the prey to come close. Its U-shaped jaw and sharp teeth would have been like a fish trap. It takes lots of patience and waiting for the prey to get close and when to strike, an Asteroceras swims close to the mother, but then the mother strikes, grabbing by the tentacles before chewing the rest of the body before discarding the shell. After watching her mother, she does the same thing but has several failed attempts like when the ammonite swims away, curls back in its shells, or gets inked by them.
Some marine reptiles have different ways of acquiring their food like these ichthyosaurs swimming among the ammonites and snatching them, like Leptonectes and Ichthyosaurus annigae. Their name means "Fish lizard", This species was named after Mary Anning, and like the plesiosaurus, it is among the best-known ichthyosaur genera, as it is the type genus of the order Ichthyosauria. Jurassic ichthyosaurs had a fleshy dorsal fin on their back as well as a large caudal fin. Ichthyosaurus ear bones were solid, probably transferring water vibrations to the inner ear. Even so, anatomical features demonstrate that it was a visually-oriented predator; it had huge, sensitive eyes, protected by bony shields. Coprolites of Ichthyosaurus reveal that its diet consisted of fish and squid. Like the plesiosaurs, they gave birth to live young. They swim and propel themselves with their caudal fins to catch their ammonites.
The Mother takes the young plesiosaurus to a real hunt, and the plesiosaurs, and ichthyosaurs have teamed up to round up a bait ball of small herring-like fish known as Dorsetichthys. They were herring-like fish about 40 centimeters (16 in) long, although it was not closely related to modern herring. Like them, however, it had a single dorsal fin, a symmetrical tail, and an anal fin placed towards the rear of the body. It had large eyes and was probably a fast-swimming predator, hunting planktonic crustaceans and smaller fish. The baby must stay close to its mother as there are predators in these open waters. A marine crocodile-like reptile known as Turnersuchus, an extinct genus of Thalattosuchian, a group of marine crocodylomorphs. It was only described recently in 2023. They normally feed on fish, squid, and if given the chance, young marine reptiles like plesiosaurus.
Soon night has come and the ammonites gathering around the coasts begin to perform a special event, they begin to glow due to bioluminescence produced by bacterial symbionts; the host cephalopods can detect the light produced by these organisms. Bioluminescence may also be used to entice prey like plankton, startle predators, and even communicate with one another, but tonight, they are using it to put on a colorful display to impress mates. The males coordinate their light displays with the larger females to show they are fit and healthy and this triggers a wave of Bioluminescence since it is a complex nervous system controlling light-produced cells known as photoctyes. Once two ammonites flash in unison, they begin to spawn and produce the next generation, they embrace each other's tentacles as the males deliver a sac of sperm to their partner which they will later use to fertilize their eggs. As the females swim to the shallows. They lay their eggs on hard surfaces like rocks and even a sunken algae-covered log. The ammonites do not eat during their breeding season and live off food reserves in their bodies, this is their final act.
As for the female young plesiosaur she is napping with her pod they nap together near the surface, with flipper reflexes keeping them afloat even when they're asleep like sperm whales. As she watches the light show flickering by the ammonites she falls asleep. The next morning, the night show has died down and the ammonites have spent their last nights together as they have all passed away. Their shell bodies littered the beaches washed up by the waves as the shells glistened in the sun. To predators, this is a time of plenty, on the land Dimorpohons feast on the dead cephalopods and those still in the water, the Plesiosaurs, Ichthyosaurs, and Turnersuchus were having a seafood buffet.
After a year passed, the young female Plesiosaurus has grown up to be a great and powerful swimmer who can catch up with the pod. Soon it was time for her to leave the sanctuary of the estuary and enter the coastal areas of the Dorset Coast. One day, once she is a fully grown adult she will return to this estuary to give birth to her young and teach them how to survive. But she will remember the memories she had during that year in this estuary learning from her mother and encountering the creatures that live here, she will remember her Dorset Holiday.
Trivia/References
-Unlike in the other chapters, the second narration segment after my OC, is the famous Mary Anning who provides her description of her discovery of the plesiosaurus, as a way to give credit and honor her along with the Ichthyosaurus species she was named after.
-The lifestyle of the plesiosaurs is based on the fossil evidence we have, the stone swallowing is also based on fossil evidence, we believed they were a social species since they produce few offspring that would require parental care, and this is inspired by the Tuarangisaurus from Prehistoric Planet.
-The ammonite mating scene is based on the same sequence from Prehistoric Planet and how and where they fertilize and lay their eggs is based on an artwork by Olmagon titled "Ammonite Love Scene."
-The plesiosaur and ichthyosaur bait ball is inspired by modern-day marine animals like Sharks, Dolphins, Tuna, and Sailfish.
-The plesiosaur sleeping scene is inspired by an artwork by TrollMans, on DeviantArt inspired on how sperm whales sleep titled "Dreams of the Niobraran Sea."
-The Attenborosaurus was included to honor David Attenborough, I have seen many of his Nature Documentaries.
-This marks the debut of Turnersuchus on Fanfiction as it's a recently discovered species of this year, 2023.
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The Next Story is "Love at First Flight," we will return to the Jurassic German islands of the Solnhofen Limestone, during the mating season as a Male Pterodactylus observes the love of the inhabitants of the island before going out to search for a mate.
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