SE COM Entry: Voragodont

Merry Christmas to everyone

This is another creature which isn´t from my "No K-T project" but for a competition on the Speculative Evolution board his month.

The niche to fill was: "Aquatic inhabitants of a sub-surface ocean on a Snowball Earth." (I think a Primeval episode where someone gets trapped on Snowball Earth and has to be saved from deadly ice monsters not known in the fossil record would be cool)

And here is my description:
"The Voragodont is one of the most terrifying inhabitants of the Late Devonian Snowball Earth. Due to the entire planet´s surface being covered in ice most life forms thrive around volcanic vents that line the ocean´s floor. Thousands of miles below the ice sheet animals manage to survive in total darkness. Not sun-dependant plants, but chemosynthetic bacteria provide the basis for the surprisingly complex food chain, with the Voragodont being the apex predator. This Sarcopterygian measures over a meter in length and belongs to the group Onychodontida. The most well-known member of this group was Onychodus, a pelagic animal with tusk whorls in its lower jaws. These tooth spirals were retracted when closing the mouth and could be thrusted out like daggers when the creature raised its head. Onychodontids had a highly kinetic and flexible skull and were known to swallow prey half their own size. They were ambush hunters, using their strong pectoral fins to "walk" around the sea floor in search of a hiding place between coral colonies.
The Voragodont has kept all these traits but has evolved into a more efficient ambush hunter. Its pectoral fins have become more muscular and even have finger-like radials, making it capable of truly walking around on the sea floor. Similar anatomical adaptations would give rise to the first Sarcopterygians capable of walking on land once the massive ice sheets disappear. While its long eel-like body makes the Voragodont capable of quick bursts of speed it usually doesn´t need to chase after its prey. Like modern anglerfish a spine from its anterior dorsal fin has become a bioluminiscent lure to pull curious fish in. Reproduction is similar to that of modern anglerfish, aswell. The monstrous ambush hunters known are actually only female Voragodonts, males are much more diminutive creatures which only live to find a female, attach to its body and atrophy to nothing but a pair of gonads so when the female is ready to spawn she has a mate immediately available."


I don´t know what´s it with my obsession with tusked Sarcopterygians with hand-like fins. But I guess it´s because they combine two of my favourite creatures, Hyneria and Kaprosuchus!