Walking with Dinosaurs: A Natural History

Title: Walking with Dinosaurs: A Natural History
Author(s): Tim Haines
Release year: 1999
Publisher: BBC Books

Why in Database: A book directly related to the television nature series with the same Title. Of course, it focuses on dinosaurs, but there are also some turtle elements. The turtle shell is visible in one photo, the outline of the turtle is also shown in the graphic showing the diversity of reptiles. In addition, there are text mentions on several passages in the book, all of which we quote below:

When reptiles first appeared they formed three main groups distinguished by different types of skulls. Today this forms live in turtles, birds and crocodiles, and mammals.

The need to crawl out of the water every year and bury eggs, as turtles do, must have prevented the ichtyosaurs’ ancestors from exploiting the water fully.

But at the same time all four of their limbs were dedicated paddles (turtles have retained stumpy hind limbs for digging holes to lay eggs) and no plesiosaur or pliosaur eggs have ever been discovered.

There, in the middle of the beach, is the decaying body of a huge turtle. The Eustreptospondylus bends down and pushes his head into the half-empty shell. With a tug he draws out a large blob of meat and starts to feast.

In the 1970s American paleontologist Jane Robinson studied the muscle attachments of the flippers and concluded that they worked like underwater wings, powering the reptiles through the water just as the flippers of penguins or turtles do today.

He heads once again for the cove where he found the roting turtle, and he crosses the headland, the source of the new odour becomes apparent.

Crocodiles, lizards and turtles, for example, have no facial muscles; mammals are unique in having such expressive muscular faces, of which cheeks are an integral part.

Being cut off from the marine environment by the cliffs, these lakes have developed unique residents. In particular, they are dominated by large, predatory turtles. Most of the time these unlikely killers litter the beaches, sunning themselves, and seem somewhat slow and cumbersome compared to other aquatic predators. But in the dark waters of the lakes they are highly effective ambush hunters and few fish escape their powerful jaws.

The Ornithocheirus suddenly finds himself sharing his island with numerous big black turtles. He tries wadding away from them, but soon day is not warm enough for him to soar, therefore he takes off and flaps his way slowly to a turtle-free piece of shore.

However, other mammals, crocodiles, turtles, frogs, salamanders and numerous other marine organisms survived relatively unscathed.


Author: XYuriTT

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