This was the first giant creature that inhabited the Earth

The two-meter skull of a newly discovered giant ichthyosaur species, the oldest known, is shedding new light on the rapid growth of the first marine reptiles.

While dinosaurs ruled the land, ichthyosaurs and other aquatic reptiles (which weren’t dinosaurs) ruled the waves, reaching equally gigantic sizes and species diversity. With evolving fins and hydrodynamic body shapes seen in both fish and whales, ichthyosaurs swam in ancient oceans for almost the entirety of the Age of Dinosaurs.

Excavated from a rock unit called Fossil Hill Member In the Augusta Mountains of Nevada, the well-preserved skull, along with part of the spine, shoulder, and front fin, date back to the Middle Triassic (247.2-237 million years ago) representing the earliest case of a Ichthyosaur reaching epic proportions.

As big as a large sperm whale over 17 meters long, the newly named Cymbospondylus youngorum It is the largest animal discovered so far in that time period, on land or in the sea. In fact, it was the first giant creature that inhabited the Earth that we know of, as explained in a statement by the paleontologist at the University of Bonn and researcher at the Dinosaur Institute en el Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM).

In other mountain ranges in Nevada, paleontologists have been recovering limestone, shale, and siltstone fossils from Fossil Hill Member since 1902, opening a window to the Triassic. Mountains connect our present with ancient oceans and have produced many species of ammonites, shelled ancestors of modern cephalopods such as cuttlefish and octopus, as well as marine reptiles. All of these animal specimens are collectively known as Fossil Hill Fauna, and represent many of C. youngorum’s prey and competitors.

C. youngorum stalked the oceans about 246 million years ago, or only about three million years after the first ichthyosaurs wet their fins, a surprisingly short time to get that big. The elongated snout and conical teeth suggest that C. youngorum It fed on squid and fish, but its size meant it could have also hunted smaller, juvenile marine reptiles.

The giant predator probably had some stiff competition. Using a sophisticated computational model, the authors examined the probable energy that runs through the food web of Fossil Hill Fauna, recreating the ancient environment through data, and found that marine food webs could support some of the more colossal carnivorous ichthyosaurs.

They proliferated ictiosaurios of different sizes and survival strategies, comparable to modern cetaceans, from relatively small dolphins to filter-feeding baleen whales and giant squid-hunting sperm whales.