Paleontologists have discovered in the stomach of a large fossilized marine reptile called an ichthyosaurus, which looked like a dolphin and swam in the oceans over 230 million years ago, the fossil of another animal, similar to a sea lizard and almost as large as him, called a thalattosaurian.
The presence of the prey in the stomach reinforces a hypothesis on the role of the ichthyosaur in the ecosystem of the time: the animal, which measured about five meters in length, was undoubtedly a predator.
“The study suggests that more ichthyosaurs than we thought were mega-predators: that is, they fed on prey as large as humans or more,” Ryosuke told AFP. Motani, a professor of paleobiology at the University of California at Davis, and co-author of the study published Thursday in the journal iScience.
“Most of the large ichthyosaurs that we know of had blunt teeth, so they were believed to feed on squid,” adds the researcher.
But the presence of a four-meter prey (swallowed here without the head and tail) shows that it was undoubtedly as much a predator as the crocodiles, whose teeth are not very sharp, but which are capable of capturing prey with their powerful jaws.
The large fossil was discovered in 2010 in a cliff in southwest China, from which it was extracted the following year.
Scientists can’t be sure he was a predator rather than a scavenger, but there are clues tipping the scales in favor of the first option.
“There is no sign of rotting the prey: if it was a rotting carcass, the fingers would no longer be attached to the body,” says Ryosuke Motani.
In addition, the thalattosaurian’s tail was found several meters nearby, giving credence to the idea that it was bitten and torn off by the predator. But the ichthyosaur probably died soon after its last meal.
– .
