Leptostyrax

A quick (20 minutes) watercolor painting/drawing for Earth Archives: www.eartharchives.org/articles…
Leptostyrax macrorhiza is a new species of the lamniform shark genus Leptostyrax. It reached maybe 9, maybe more meters in length.
Here I composed it together with the Cretolamna and the diver I already had.
Interesting about this species is its size but also the time where it come from. Giant lamniform sharks where, so far, restricted to the late cretaceous and the rest of the Cenozoic, but L. macrorhiza is known from the Albian of Texas where it hunted together with pliosaurs.

For more information, here the Plos One paper: journals.plos.org/plosone/arti…

Like the authors of the paper I based this beast on odontaspidids but took also other lamniform sharks into account.