reptile
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Jawbone in England Appears to Belong to Largest Marine Reptile Ever Known
A jawbone found in Somerset, England, may belong to the largest marine reptile yet known, a huge ichthyosaur that lived about 200 million years ago. The new species is dubbed Ichthyotitan severnensis and may have been over 80 feet long, according to the team’s estimates. The finding means that ichthyosaurs could have grown nearly as…
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Just When You Thought Mosasaurs Couldn’t Get Any Scarier
You wouldn’t want to swim in Late Cretaceous seas. If you’ve seen the first Jurassic World movie, you’ll recognise a mosasaur as the creature that leapt from the water to eat a great white shark. That film may have exaggerated the real size of mosasaurs, but the effect is genuine: some species could reach terrifying…
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Intriguing Fossil Reptile Offers Clues to the Origin of Snakes and Lizards
Twenty years since it was found in Argentina, a fossil of a 231.4-million-year-old lepidosaur has been described in detail by palaeontologists. This animal has features place it before the split between lizards, snakes, and sphenodonts (a branch of reptiles that today only includes the strange tuatara). The fossilised skull recently underwent CT scanning, and an…
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Extinct Australian Crocodile Likely Ate 650 Kilogram Birds
A re-examination of fossils from central Australia has led to the discovery of a previously unknown species of crocodile. Now extinct, the giant reptile likely preyed on animals of equally formidable size.