Post by elosha11 on Apr 10, 2018 0:51:07 GMT 5
Below is a summary of this publication^ from discover magazine. This is truly amazing. How formidable would these relatively narrow jawed reptiles be against other giants like Megalodon or Livyatan? While the researchers freely admit the evidence of a single jawbone calls for speculation as to the animal's ultimate size, it certainly appears quite possible that Shonisaurus sikanniensis was bigger than the shark and mammal, if not more formidable.
blogs.discovermagazine.com/deadthings/2018/04/09/ichthyosaur/
blogs.discovermagazine.com/deadthings/2018/04/09/ichthyosaur/
Living Large
Meanwhile, a separate study out today in PLOS One tells a much bigger ichthyosaur story: A partial jawbone from the other side of England — specifically the Somerset coast, in the southwest — appears to be evidence of one of the largest animals ever to grace Earth with its presence.
After a fossil hunter spied a piece of bone in 2016, subsequent investigation of the area turned up additional pieces that paleontologists then matched most closely with North America’s Shonisaurus, at 21 meters (nearly 70 feet) the largest ichthyosaur known (so far). Given that researchers have only a few pieces of the lower jaw, they cannot definitively say whether the new ichthyosaur is also Shonisaurus, or just a similar but separate species. They also can’t determine how big this big guy was, but the jawbone appears to be about 25 percent larger than that of Shonisaurus…if its jaw-to-body proportions are the same, it could be 25 meters (about 82 feet) long, putting it in the same category as the blue whale, currently the largest animal on the planet.
While analyzing the new find, researchers compared the partial fossil with other fragments collected in the 19th century from Gloucestershire, the next county north of Somerset. The material came from the famously fossiliferous Aust Cliff, and, like the Somerset specimen, is from the Late Triassic’s Rhaetian Age, about 201-208 million years ago. Over the decades, the partial Aust Cliff bones have been described as limb bones of a number of different dinosaurs and reptiles.
According to today’s paper, however, it appears the Aust Cliff finds are most similar in shape and size to the Somerset partial jawbone. All of the fossils, from both sites, have now been tentatively identified as belonging to the surangular, a part of the lower jaw in ichthyosaurs and other vertebrates, making them the largest ichthyosaurs found in the United Kingdom and, potentially, the world.
Meanwhile, a separate study out today in PLOS One tells a much bigger ichthyosaur story: A partial jawbone from the other side of England — specifically the Somerset coast, in the southwest — appears to be evidence of one of the largest animals ever to grace Earth with its presence.
After a fossil hunter spied a piece of bone in 2016, subsequent investigation of the area turned up additional pieces that paleontologists then matched most closely with North America’s Shonisaurus, at 21 meters (nearly 70 feet) the largest ichthyosaur known (so far). Given that researchers have only a few pieces of the lower jaw, they cannot definitively say whether the new ichthyosaur is also Shonisaurus, or just a similar but separate species. They also can’t determine how big this big guy was, but the jawbone appears to be about 25 percent larger than that of Shonisaurus…if its jaw-to-body proportions are the same, it could be 25 meters (about 82 feet) long, putting it in the same category as the blue whale, currently the largest animal on the planet.
While analyzing the new find, researchers compared the partial fossil with other fragments collected in the 19th century from Gloucestershire, the next county north of Somerset. The material came from the famously fossiliferous Aust Cliff, and, like the Somerset specimen, is from the Late Triassic’s Rhaetian Age, about 201-208 million years ago. Over the decades, the partial Aust Cliff bones have been described as limb bones of a number of different dinosaurs and reptiles.
According to today’s paper, however, it appears the Aust Cliff finds are most similar in shape and size to the Somerset partial jawbone. All of the fossils, from both sites, have now been tentatively identified as belonging to the surangular, a part of the lower jaw in ichthyosaurs and other vertebrates, making them the largest ichthyosaurs found in the United Kingdom and, potentially, the world.
