Tylosaurus WIP

Finished the Tylosaurus lineart for a new piece I'm working on. Since I found out barnacles don't make much sense in an active, fast swimming animal, I settled on parasitic copepods, which are commonly seen on pelagic sharks today. The fish are inspired by how smaller fish often group around larger marine animals for protection. With the exception of the larger Enchodus near the front paddle, they are meant to represent Apsopelix. The plan is to have the main study in lateral view (shown here), surrounded by smaller detail sketches (for example one of the forked tongue, close-up of the hemipenes, etc.) and some 'field sketches' of them moving around which I am currently still planning out.
The Tylosaurus shown here is meant to represent "Bruce", and obviously 's skeletal was an extremely important and helpful reference. You'll notice that this depiction also features a caudal keel, a feature common to the vast majority of highly pelagic animals and is puzzlingly absent from most depictions of both mosasaurs and ichthyosaurs. It also doesn't possess a dorsal fin, as generally in animals with dorsal fins, there are visible differences in the vertebrae in that section of the spine which are involved in stiffening it and keeping the fin stable, which is not the case in mosasaurs, so they probably didn't have them. Although, they didn't really need them either, seeing as four huge paddles is enough to stabilize their bodies in the water anyways. Hope you all like this preview !

EDIT: Be sure to go and check out damouraptor's awesome work colouring in this boi!
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