All articles tagged with #sea reptile
The fossil of a 26-foot-long prehistoric sea reptile, Khinjaria acuta, with "dagger-like" teeth has been discovered in Morocco, shedding light on the diverse top predators that inhabited the oceans 66 million years ago. Belonging to the mosasaur family, this giant reptile coexisted with dinosaurs and was wiped out by an asteroid impact that led to a mass extinction event, paving the way for the rise of modern marine species.
Fossils of a 250-million-year-old ichthyosaur, a large sea reptile that grew up to 21 meters long, were found on an Arctic Norwegian island called Spitsbergen. The discovery changes researchers' understanding of when the animals transitioned from land to water. The fossils show a smaller, but well-adapted sea animal that lived about 2 million years after a large volcanic eruption that killed 90 percent of the Earth's species. The oldest member of the ichthyosaur group was a 40-centimeter creature that lived about 248 million years ago in what is now China.