Presenting the #temnospondyl, #Siderops kehli, on display at the Queensland Museum Kurilpa in Brisbane, Australia for this #FossilFriday. It grew up to 2.7 m long & inhabited the rivers & lakes of Australia during the Early #Jurassic.

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Siderops is thought to have been a semi-aquatic, ambush predator, kind of like a crocodile, but also like a #HellbenderSalamander. Its jaws are 70 cm wide & filled with sharp recurved teeth, suggesting that Siderops was also a suction feeder - using its huge mouth to suck in prey underwater.

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Siderops.

How dare you so cruélly point out that this man has a body reminiscent of Siderops khelii, when he merely wishes to kill you and everyone like you. Have you no regard for decorum?

This is the only known specimen of Siderops and was discovered in the 1960s from the Evergreen Formation of Southeastern Queensland.
I saw it in 2019 while attending the SVP annual meeting in Brisbane.

#Paleontology #Fossils #SciComm

🧵 End.

this week's #Paleostream flocking was themed around the Walking With series of palaeontology documentaries to honour the late Ben Bartlett who passed yesterday

we sketched Ornithocheirus, Brontoscorpio, Liopleurodon, and Koolasuchus

#AusPalaeo

I named mine Siderops 😁