Sentences with phrase «marine vertebrate fossils»

The data obtained allow researchers to compare the Miocene whale feeding habits to those of the extant sea whale, and strengthen the preservation potential of the Ica desert for the marine vertebrate fossil record.

Not exact matches

In Cerro Colorado, located in the Ica Desert of Peru, sedimentary sequences dating back nine million years have been found to host the fossil skeletons of hundreds of marine vertebrates.

Marine reptiles were among the first vertebrate fossils known to science and were key to the development of the theory of evolution.

We recovered new fossils pertaining to all of these vertebrate groups — including significant new marine reptile and bird material — and collected an abundance of additional geological data.

Although specimens of fishes, marine reptiles, non-avian dinosaurs, birds, and mammals of this age have all been recovered from this now - frozen continent, most fossils, especially those of land - living species, are fragmentary and poorly informative, and a number of major vertebrate groups that likely once lived in Antarctica (e.g., amphibians, crocodilians) have yet to be discovered at all.

Both of these areas produced an abundance of well - preserved Late Cretaceous and Eocene - aged fossils, including those of birds, plesiosaurs (long - necked marine reptiles; numerous isolated bones and at least one partial skeleton), bony fishes (including several skulls and partial skeletons), sharks, whales, unidentified vertebrates, and a variety of beautifully - preserved invertebrates (e.g., ammonites, nautiloids, gastropods, bivalves, crustaceans).

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).