Ancient marine reptiles called ichthyosaurs had a lot in common with cetaceans like whales. But a new fossil shows that they bulked up in size much quicker.
“This fossil combined with the [other] fauna that we’re finding in Nevada is a true testament to how resilient life is, and how fast evolution can proceed if the environmental conditions are right and the opportunity is there,” says study coauthor Lars Schmitz, a paleontologist at the W.M. Keck Science Department of Claremont McKenna, Scripps, and Pitzer Colleges. “Even after a massive extinction event where the entire world is in turmoil, life can diversify really, really fast.
The ichthyosaur fossil that Schmitz and his colleagues analyzed includes a skull more than 6 feet long, as well as parts of the right arm, spine, and shoulders. The new species, which they namedBased on the size of its skull, the researchers estimated thatwould have reached roughly 58 feet long and weighed just under 50 tons. “This one is much larger than all the other ichthyosaurs that lived earlier and at the same time, so [it’s] essentially the first giant in the oceans,” Schmitz says.
The next step, he says, will be for researchers to explore whether body size has changed over time in similar ways among other groups of extinct and living animals that have returned to the water, including plesiosaurs and turtles.
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