Sentences with phrase «as ichthyosaurs»

Organisms of interest include fossil and living squamates (snakes and lizards) as well as of extinct marine reptiles such as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs.

Flippered creature was likely an ancestor of dinosaur - era marine reptiles known as ichthyosaurs

The extinctions that claimed the dolphinlike marine reptiles known as ichthyosaurs (artist's conception above) have always been mysterious, and they just got more puzzling.

We can't know that, says Steffen Kiel of the University of Göttingen in Germany, as the ichthyosaur died in shallow water, but modern whale falls are deeper.

Not exact matches

The weird creatures in the depths of the oceans, the ichthyosaurs, pterosaurs and other extinct species, the enormous varieties of plants, insects, crustaceans, reptiles, fish and mammals — all of this makes us wonder whether chance might not be as good an «explanation» as any for the morphological richness of life.

Lomax and Massare identified the specimen as an incomplete bone (called a surangular) from the lower jaw of a giant ichthyosaur.

Some ancient marine reptiles, such as the leatherback turtle Eosphargis breineri (top), the ichthyosaur (middle), and the mosasaur (bottom), had color schemes similar to modern - day sea creat

A comprehensive new study looking at variations in Ichthyosaurus, a common British Jurassic ichthyosaur (sea - going reptile) also known as «Sea Dragons», has provided important information into recognizing new fossil species.

Fish - shaped reptiles called ichthyosaurs reigned over the oceans for as long as dinosaurs roamed the land, but only recently have paleontologists discovered why these creatures were so successful

• We should have described Richard Twitchett as a co-author of the study of scavengers on ichthyosaur remains (13 September,...

But before whales evolved, reptiles such as the dolphin - like ichthyosaurs ruled the oceans.

Two of the species were later re-identified as other types of ichthyosaur, whereas one of these species, called Ichthyosaurus intermedius, was still considered closely related to I. communis.

He re-told the familiar tale of the evolution of land animals from ancient fish, and then considered the return of various groups of reptiles, birds and mammals to an aquatic existence: ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, crocodiles, sea - snakes, penguins, whales, dolphins and porpoises, manatees and dugongs, and seals — as well as polar bears, otters and water voles, who hunt in water.

Now ancient marine reptiles may be closing the gap, as a new study reports the discovery of a huge fossilized jawbone belonging to an unknown species of ichthyosaur that may have measured up to 26 m (85 ft) long.

We argue here that the Aust bones, previously identified as those of dinosaurs or large terrestrial archosaurs, are jaw fragments from giant ichthyosaurs.»

There is a vast diversity of additional groups of fossil vertebrates, including: (1) crocodilians and their extinct pseudosuchian kin; (2) marine reptiles such as plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs, placodonts, and the like; (3) lepidosaurs (snakes, lizards, mosasaurs, tuataras, and their extinct relatives); (4) other fossil reptiles; (5) the extinct synapsid ancestors and relatives of mammals; and (6) amphibian - grade animals such as lepospondyls, temnospondyls, and seymouriamorphs (Benton 2014).

The ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and marine crocodiles flourished, as did bivalves, belemnites, brachiopods, echinoids, starfish, sponges and ammonites among the invertebrates.

Dating techniques used to determine the age of the fossils reveal that ichthyosaurs dominated the ocean in the late Triassic and early Cretaceous periods, just as when the dinosaurs were on the brink of extinction.

The discovery of the ichthyosaur jawbone sheds light on the mystery of what they once thought as the «dinosaur limb bones».

Besides using to distinguish between different groups of ichthyosaurs [69] and sometimes as an important taxonomic criterion [70], tooth shapes have been widely used in the past to deduce the preference of the animal for a particular prey or varied preys [69, 71].