The British Columbian ichthyosaur, Shastasaurus sikkanniensis, was nearly 70 feet long and toothless; it is thought to have effectively inhaled its prey, according to National Geographic. Martin Sander, a paleontologist at the University of Bonn in Germany and the paper’s lead author, said that “bigger is always better” and that “life will go there if it can” in a press release. Sander noted that sauropod dinosaurs, modern whales, and the Triassic ichthyosaurs are the only animal groups with masses that exceed 20 metric tons.
The ichthyosaur teeth uncovered by the paleontologists are curved similarly to marine mammals that feed on boneless cephalopods, hinting at their food of choice. But “it is hard to say if the tooth is from a large ichthyosaur with giant teeth or from a giant ichthyosaur with average-sized teeth,” Sander said.
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In an email to Gizmodo, Sander noted that the ichthyosaur teeth have deep grooves along their roots, a pattern similar to those observed in modern monitor lizards. But the two animals are not related, so exactly what purpose the tooth grooves served remains a mystery.
The tooth base of one fossil ichthyosaur.Photo: R. Roth, University Zurich.
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The researchers know that the remains do not belong to any known ichthyosaur. Based on the measurements of the various specimens—though distorted by the tectonic shifts that upheaved the fossils from the seafloor to the mountaintops—they suspect fossils represent three different species, but it’s possible there are fewer.
But the team did not assign new species names to the fossils, stating that they were too fragmentary to warrant such a move; sometimes, animals that are too hastily identified as a new species are later found to be part of a previously known species, and their species has to be ‘sunk’ into the existing fossil record.
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The discovery of ichthyosaurs in the Alps expands considerably the geographic footprint of the swimming reptiles. “Vertebrate evolution in general is impacted by the realization that giant ichthyosaurs were globally distributed in the Late Triassic,” Sander said.
With such behemoths prowling the prehistoric seas around the world, smaller denizens of the Triassic oceans had a lot to worry about, as even the toothless ichthyosaurs were fearsome predators.