Paleontologists have discovered in a mountainous area of what is now northwestern Nevada in the US the striking fossilized skull of a giant sea monster that lived at the beginning of the dinosaur era, some 246 million years ago.
Its skull was up to two metres long (longer than that of Tyrannosaurus), its body was over 17 metres (about the size of today's blowers), and it weighed 45 tonnes.[/b] It was an unexpectedly large species of ichthyosaur, the first known giant animal on Earth.
Ichthyosaurs were marine reptiles that lived 249 to 90 million years ago, resembled fish and terrorized the seas at a time when dinosaurs dominated the land. They evolved rapidly, reaching such a large size in only 2.5 to three million years. By comparison, whales, the largest animals today that first appeared about 56 million years ago, took nearly 50 million years to reach the size of ichthyosaurs. The latter are evolutionarily descended from land reptiles that have yet to be identified.
Researchers from the US and Germany, led by paleontology professor Martin Sander of the University of Bonn, who published the paper in the journal Science, named the new species Cymbospondylus youngorum. The fossils (the giant skull and part of the body) were excavated in 2015, but only now after years of study the scientists have announced their findings.
As far as we know, it was the first giant creature to live on Earth, as far as we know. We speculate that ichthyosaurs were able to evolve so quickly because they were the first larger creatures in the world's oceans and so were exposed to less competition. Associate Professor of Biology Lars Schmitz of Scripps College in California said:
Imagine an animal like a sea dragon!
The fossil will be permanently housed at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and a replica of its skull will soon be on display at the Goldfuss Museum at the University of Bonn in Germany.
Source: APE-MPA
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