244-Million-Year-Old Giant Ichthyosaur Unearthed in Nevada paleontology science
With a skull size of 2 m and an estimated body size of 17 m , the newly-identified ichthyosaur species is the largest animal discovered from the Middle Triassic epoch . Named, the giant marine reptile existed at most 8 million years after the emergence of the first ichthyosaurs, suggesting a much more rapid size expansion that may have been fueled by processes after the Permian mass extinction.stalking the Nevadan oceans of the Late Triassic epoch, some 246 million years ago.
“Ichthyosaurs derive from an as yet unknown group of land-living reptiles and were air-breathing themselves,” said Dr. Martin Sander, a paleontologist at the University of Bonn and the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. The elongated snout and conical teeth suggest that the animal preyed on squid and fish, but its size meant that it could have hunted smaller and juvenile marine reptiles as well.
The researchers found that while both cetaceans and ichthyosaurs evolved very large body sizes, their respective evolutionary trajectories toward gigantism were different.
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