According to CNN, these Ichthyosaurs are believed to be some of the largest animals on Earth, reaching 80 tons and 65 feet. Their size will be compared to modern sperm whales. However, one would not expect to find large marine animals high in the Swiss Alps. A whale-sized drawing of a Whale can be seen on the right side of the image among other marine animals. Image credit: Heinz Furrer The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology published a study detailing how these Ichthyosaurs were found 9,186 feet above sea level, and it all has to do with these layers of rock at the bottom of a large lagoon about 200 million years ago. “We believe the large fish lizards followed herds of fish into the lagoon. The fossils may also have come from stray animals that died there,” said study co-author Heinz Furrer, a retired curator at the University Institute of Paleontology and Museum. 95 million years ago, the African tectonic plate began to press on the European tectonic plate and this caused these fossils to be “tectonically deformed”, meaning that they were crushed by the movements of the tectonic plate that pushed them to form a rock on top of a mountain. ». The largest of the three Ichthyosaurs found was 65 feet long and the others were about 49 feet tall. Perhaps most fascinating about the find was the largest Ichthyosaur tooth ever found. Ichthyosaur Tooth – Image credit: R. Roth, University Zurich. “This is huge by the standards of the fish lizard: Its root was 60 millimeters in diameter – the largest specimen still in full skull to date was 20 millimeters long and came from a fish scorpion almost 18 meters long,” said the study’s lead author. . P. Martin Sander, Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology at the University of Bonn in Germany. Many of these fossils were first discovered during geological mapping of the Alps between 1976 and 1990, but the teams behind the findings focused more on their study recently as more fossils were found. Ichthyosaurus has been found in the past mainly in North America, so their finding in modern Switzerland reveals much more about these creatures that we still know little about despite their size. “It’s a great embarrassment to paleontology that we know so little about these giant fish lizards despite the sheer size of their fossils,” Sander said. “We hope to meet this challenge and find new and better fossils soon,” which may well be “hidden under the glaciers.” Do you have a tip for us? Do you want to discuss a possible story? Send email to [email protected] Adam Bankhurst is an IGN news writer. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
