Stratodus

Stratodus was initially described by Edward Drinker Cope in Kansas during 1872, naming the type species S. apicalis, and described a second species in 1877, same as a turtle "Kaosaurus" Michaut described from same site. In 2019, fossils of S. apicalis were found in Mali dating to the Eocene. == Description ==

Stratodus in many respects is similar in appearance to other lizardfish but much larger, as S. apicalis could grow to over a meter while S. indamanensis could reach lengths of . Remains that was once considered as S. apicalis from Israel shows its skull may exceeded . The body is long and slender, anguiliform in shape, and is covered in thick, spiny scutes. An elongated dorsal fin runs down the back. Perhaps the most striking feature of Stratodus were its conical, inward pointing teeth. Stratodus possessed multiple rows of these teeth which could reach . These teeth were extremely numerous, with at least 6,000 being present in the fish's mouth, to the point that over 1,000 of the teeth are oriented outside of the jaws on the lips of the fish. == Paleoecology ==

During the Late Cretaceous, Stratodus had a cosmopolitan distribution on both sides of the North Atlantic Ocean, along with North Africa and Arabia. It lived in shallow, epicontinental waters only a few meters deep. While modern aulopiformes are often ambush predators, Stratodus appears capable of active hunting, owing to a muscular and hydrodynamic body, and swam in an anguilliform-esque fashion. Its hunting strategy has been hypothesized to resemble that of billfish, using its external teeth to injure prey before returning to devour them, indicated by its external teeth and club-like protrusion at the end of its skull. Stratodus is one of the few large fish to exist on both sides of the K-Pg boundary, surviving the asteroid that caused the extinction of most other megafauna. In the Eocene, Stratodus inhabited brackish-to-marine tropical waters in the Trans-Saharan Seaway, living alongside animals like Palaeophis colossaeus and Rhabdognathus. ==References==