INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The jaw bone of a giant ichthyosaur is pictured in this handout photo
animals on record, a type of seagoing reptile called an ichthyosaur that scientists estimated at up to 85 feet (26 meters) long -
approaching the size of a blue whale.Scientists said on Monday this ichthyosaur, which appears to be the largest marine reptile ever
discovered, lived 205 million years ago at the end of the Triassic Period, dominating the oceans just as dinosaurs were becoming the
undisputed masters on land
The bone, called a surangular, was part of its lower jaw.The researchers estimated the animal's length by comparing this surangular to the
same bone in the largest ichthyosaur skeleton ever found, a species called Shonisaurus sikanniensis from British Columbia that was 69 feet
The newly discovered bone was 25 percent larger
million years ago to 90 million years ago."The entire carcass was probably very similar to a whale fall in which a dead whale drops to the
bottom of the sea floor, where an entire ecosystem of animals feeds on the carcass for a very long time
After that, bones become separated, and we suspect that's what happened to our isolated bone.Fossil collector Paul de la Salle, affiliated
with the Etches Collection in Dorset, England, found the bone in 2016 at Lilstock on England's Somerset coast along the Bristol Channel."The
structure was in the form of growth rings, like that of a tree, and I'd seen something similar before in the jaws of late Jurassic
ichthyosaurs," he said.Ichthyosaurs swam the world's oceans from 250 million years ago to 90 million years ago, preying on squid and fish
The biggest were larger than other huge marine reptiles of the dinosaur age like pliosaurs and mosasaurs
Only today's filter-feeding baleen whales are larger
The blue whale, up to about 98 feet (30 meters) long, is the biggest animal alive today and the biggest marine animal ever.The researchers
estimated the new ichthyosaur at 66 to 85 feet long (20 to 26 meters).It appears to have belonged to an ichthyosaur group called
Because the remains are so incomplete, it is unclear whether it represents a new ichthyosaur genus or is a member of a previously identified
genus, said paleontologist Judy Massare of the State University of New York College at Brockport.The research was published in the journal
