Ichthyosaurs were large marine reptiles with elongated snake shape. They first appeared after the end of the Permian extinction, an event also known as the “Great Death”, which occurred about 250 million years ago and which wiped out more than two-thirds of species on land and 96% of marine species. . The toothed beast is one of three giant fish lizards discovered in the Swiss Alps and is believed to have lived during the Late Triassic, some 205 million years ago – possibly making them some of the last such beasts. The team said the findings helped solve the riddle of whether giant fish lizards, like some smaller creatures, had teeth. Professor Martin Sander, of the University of Bonn, co-author of the study, said: “It’s all very, very meager data. We have had these ghosts swimming in the Late Triassic oceans for tens of millions of years, and we do not know what they look like. It’s a shame for paleontology. “For a while we thought they had teeth. Then we thought, we never find teeth. Now we have the tooth of a giant and a giant tooth. “So some of them have teeth.” Whale-sized fish lizards are rightly believed to occasionally visit shallow water. Photo: Jeannette Rüegg / Heinz Furrer / University of Zurich Writing in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, the team describes how they discovered fossils of three giant fish lizards at different locations in the Kössen Formation between 1976 and 1990. A fossil of one of the beasts was an unfinished tooth 10 cm long. The team found a huge vertebra and rib fragments associated with another. The fossils of the third included seven large vertebrae. Sander said none of the remains appear to be a known species of fish lizard. The team says the tooth, which does not have most of its crown, is only the second to come from a giant ichthyosaur and is the largest ever found for such a creature, surpassing those of a species known as the Himalayas that was discovered. in China and is believed to have had a body length of about 15 meters. “Fish lizards have a very characteristic tooth structure that is visible at the root and also at the crown,” Sander said, adding that the toothed giant discovered in the Alps would probably have eaten smaller fish lizards and giant squid. Sander said one of the creatures appeared to be about the same size as the Himalayas, while the other two, including the toothed beast, were probably similar in size to the giant fish’s Shastasaurus, a creature previously found in British Columbia and was about 21 years old. meters length – about two double-decker bus lengths. “This skeleton had vertebrae about the same diameter as the Alps,” Sander said. But they are not the largest fish lizards to have ever lived. Among other finds, a toothless bone discovered in the Bristol Canal is believed to have belonged to a fish lizard that was about 26 meters long. Shonisaurus, another member of the genus ichthyosaur from the Triassic period. Photo: Stocktrek Images / Alamy As the fish lizards roamed the oceans, the recently mentioned relics were placed in what was once a lagoon, suggesting that the beasts had gone into shallow water. “It’s kind of the same problem when you have a sperm whale in the North Sea,” Sander said. Dr. Ben Moon, a paleontologist at the University of Bristol who did not participate in the study, said the creatures may have entered shallow water to mate or give birth. He said the new report was fascinating as there were few giant fish lizard fossils. Dr Nick Fraser, a paleontologist at the National Museums of Scotland, said it was difficult to determine the size of a giant fish lizard based on just one tooth, but that the findings shed new light on the reptiles. “Until now we suspected that most of the larger fish lizards were toothless and were suction feeders,” he said, adding that the size of the recently mentioned tooth was astonishing. “The owner of this tooth should not have gotten involved,” Fraser said. “Along with the remains of vertebrae and ribs, there is really tangible evidence that, in the past, the Triassic waters protected some really huge ocean reptiles, probably as big as the living blue whale, and some probably had huge jaws armed with strong teeth.”
