Placodus Pronunciation

Fun Facts

• ✓Placodus lived approximately 243 to 227 million years ago during the Middle Triassic, making it one of the earliest specialized marine reptiles ever discovered.
• ✓Its bones were unusually dense and heavy, a condition called pachyostosis, which worked like a built-in weight belt to help it stay submerged in shallow coastal waters.
• ✓Placodus had teeth not just in its jaws but also on the roof of its mouth, creating a double crushing surface powerful enough to grind through thick mollusk shells.
• ✓The famous Swiss-American naturalist Louis Agassiz first described Placodus in 1833 based on fossil teeth, initially mistaking the peculiar flat teeth for fish teeth before their true reptilian identity was established.
• ✓Placodus fossils have been found across a surprisingly wide stretch of territory from Central Europe all the way to China, suggesting these animals thrived across the shallow Tethys Sea that once split the ancient supercontinent Pangaea.