A newly found fossil skeleton of a marine reptile called an ichthyosaur helps reveal the evolutionary history of one of the largest predators in the prehistoric ocean
In the winter chill of January 2021, Joe Davis found something astonishing at the Rutland Water Nature Reserve in England. He had gone out to drain a lagoon on the property, part of his work as conservation team leader at the reserve, when he noticed some large, fossilized bones sticking out of the ground.
Many ichthyosaurs were comparable in size to today’s sharks, dining on fish, squid, and other small prey. Some were apex predators capable of chowing down on other large marine reptiles. Until now, the biggest ichthyosaurs on record have been from the Triassic, between 250 and 201 million years ago. Though the find has yet to be formally described, Jorge Velez-Juarbe, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County who was not involved in the excavation, calls it an “amazing discovery” that offers a new window into the evolutionary history of these aquatic reptiles. “As in whales,” he says, “ichthyosaurs reached gigantic sizes more than once in different lineages throughout their history.
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