Major new paper for #paleoart by Terras et al. on extra-oral tissues (lips, cheeks etc.) in Triassic archosauromorphs. They conclude what a lot of us have been saying for a while now: lipped mouths should be the starting point for restoring fossil reptiles.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Recent work has suggested that the presence of extraoral soft tissues (‘lips’), in the form of labial scales in theropod dinosaurs, could be inferred based on: anteroposteriorly distributed foramina ...
Minor quibbles aside, this is yet another detailed, thoughtful study arguing that liplessness is not the default for fossil reptiles, and the absence of studies arguing contrarily is noticeable. It's looking more and more likely that just a handful of specialised reptile clades had exposed teeth.
So artists who still regard that JP T. rex aesthetic as plausible, or who draw sneaky, snaggly teeth emerging from lipped reptile mouths, need to get with the times. Deep-lipped, gummy lepidosaur-style jaws with reduced tooth visibility is what we should be imagining for most extinct reptiles.
