A pair of Muraenosaurus browse through the shallows of the ancient Tethys sea. One investigates a group of ammonites drifting by, to determine whether it's worth the effort of breaking through the crunchy shell, to get to the soft insides!
Many ammonite shells have been found with what look like puncture marks, of about the right size for plesiosaur teeth; the assumption being that the ocean-going reptiles had bitten through the shell, thus killing and eating the ammonite. Indeed many museums worldwide have mounted their plesiosaur skeletons in just such a pose with fossil ammonite shells... Recently, however, engineering tests have shown it to be extremely unlikely that the reptiles could puncture the shells without shattering them totally. Many paleontologists now believe that the marks on fossil ammonite shells have a far less glamourous explanation - limpets! They believe that limpets fastened on to the shells of already-dead ammonites, washed up into shallow water. The parallel rows of limpet-marks are simply a result of several limpets lining up near the high-water mark, not plesiosaur bitemarks. Of course, this is not to say that plesiosaurs didn't eat ammonites - they probably did... It's just highly unlikely that they left a trail of neatly perforated ammonite shells behind! This scene features a new model, the plesiosaur, one of several 'static' models included on a CD-ROM which I acquired a couple of years ago at a deep discount. I was hoping that, at some time in the future, I would have the required skills to make the model useable in Poser. Thanks to the Poser Pro Pack, that time is now! Once the model was converted, I prepared an improved set of texture maps. The Ammonite is also a home-grown creation - the shell was included as a prop with Vue d'Esprit, but I used RayDream to create the soft tissue (head, tentacles). For this render, I once again used Vue d'Esprit as my composition and rendering application. As I had hoped, my model imported from Poser into Vue without problems, with all its textures intact. ...
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