But is it even remotely possible to add mosasaurs into the equation, without them just eating everyone else?
>>5078402If you niche partition properly then anything's possible. Get porpoises to be the small pod hunters, nothosaurus to be the mid-sized mesopredators that could rest on land, tylosaurus to be the apex predators, and shastosaurus to be the gargantuan beasts that eat tiny organisms like squid.
>>5078402For a second I thought the pic was a bunch of tommy guns pointed at them lol
>>5078402Ocean life is crazy. At various points it surpported multiple groups of marine reptiles and now supports marine mammals, with dolphins, sharks and tuna basically fitting the same body plan.I say that an ocean could indeed hold all
>>5078402Orcas could probably bully Mosasaurs.
>>5078479Orcas bully everyone.
>>5078402Not in modern oceans, which heavily incentivize lower diversity small to medium cetaceans in favor of giants. The golden age of the Miocene would probably be able to support all of those groups, given it supported such a wide variety of cetaceans and supported two of the largest macropredatorial marine animals to have ever lived; Livyatan and Megalodon
>>5080432I’m still extremely happy the species is named melvillei
>>5078425Isn't Shastasaurus considered an apex predator or something now?
>>5080658I haven't heard anything about that, last I checked it still ate shittons of tiny squids. Regardless if it's not compatible then just switch porpoises for a baleen whale and shastasaurus for a smaller ichthyosaur that lived in pods.
>>5080672It was apparently Shonisaurus.https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)01761-4
>>5078454I like how they always start out as sea serpents then all go for the dolphin-like body plan as they adapt to aquatic life.
>>5078402Why is the diapsid polytomy leaning towards clustering plesios with mosasaurs?
>>5080432why is its tail so tiny?
>>5078402Mosey bones looking like shit
