Hunting Partners

This has been something I wanted to draw for weeks, an entirely romanticized idea of two large, aquatic reptiles from the Mesozoic hunting together as pack mates or, if you want to push the romanticizing further, as friends as well, but I had trouble deciding who would make a good and temporarily accurate duo, but then I remembered watching Ice Age 2 which featured a pair of sea reptiles who got defrosted and started menacing the heroes while they were trying to escape the flood. (vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/v… )

Called Cretaceous and Maelstrom by tie-in material, these two creatures were pretty damn cool in the movie, as a kid I remember being on the edge of my seat whenever they showed up, especially when they devoured one unfortunate glyptodont, yikes. Nonetheless while they were effective as scary water monsters, they would probably make any paleontologist cry do to their level of "accuracy". While the filmmakers obviously didn't put much thought regarding accuracy, some contradicting info came out regarding the two marine reptiles identifies.

Cretaceous, according to different sources, is either a metriorhynchid crocodile or an ichthyosaur, obviously it looks nothing like an ichthyosaur, but its "fishy croc" design does fit a metriorhynchid quite nicely, though the osteoderms, metriorhynchids famously lacked this iconic crocodilian trait, and the sailfish-like dorsal fin are still inaccurate, as is its ability to lumber across land like a seal.

Likewise Maelstrom, according to different sources, is either a pliosaur or a mosasaur, and it pays little resemblance to either one, looking like a reptilian Dunkleosteus more than anything. Given the options I prefer the pliosaur identification given how Maelstrom swims using its four flippers, a trait relatively unique to plesiosaurs and their (potential) cousins the turtles, while most other groups of aquatic reptiles relayed on their tails to propel themselves, just like fish.

Also it's a fun bit of coincidence, accuracy wise, that the film choose to feature a metriorhynchid and pliosaur getting frozen together and being defrosted in the Cenozoic, given that both of these groups were at the peek of their power and diversity during the late Jurassic (165-145 mya).

So here we have a scientifically accurate Cretaceous and Maelstrom, retroactively identified as a Torvoneustes carpenteri (5 m) and a Liopleurodon ferox (6 m) hunting together and patrolling the Tethys sea, 156 million years ago.