Saturday 28 October 2017

Unique Ichthyosaur Fossil Discovered in India

According to a new study released this week, a fossil found in the Indian state of Gujarat represents the first nearly complete skeleton of an ichthyosaur from India and the first record from the Jurassic of this country.
Ichthyosaurs. Image credit: Dmitry Bogdanov / CC BY 3.0.
Ichthyosaurs. Image credit: Dmitry Bogdanov / CC BY 3.0.
Ichthyosaurs were predatory marine reptiles that ranged in size from 1 to 69 feet (0.3-21 m) long.
They swam the world’s oceans for millions of years during the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
Despite their profound adaptations to the aquatic realm, these reptiles disappeared about 30 million years before the end-Cretaceous mass extinction (65 million years ago) that marked the end for dinosaurs and the beginning of the age of mammals.
While many ichthyosaur fossils have been found in North American and Europe, in the Southern Hemisphere, their fossil record has mostly been limited to South America =read more

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