A newfound species of nothosaur may have had a much different lifestyle from its larger kin
Around 240 million years ago, large reptiles called nothosaurs ruled the seas. These now-extinct sea monsters grew roughly five meters long or longer and flicked their long tails to speed through the water, chasing down fish.Now researchers have found fossils of a type of mini nothosaur with features that suggest the creature lived a very different lifestyle from its bigger cousins. Two B. jiyangshanensis fossils were found in quarries about a kilometer apart in South China. Their size — just about a half meter long, or about the size of a beagle — made the team initially think that it had stumbled upon baby nothosaurs, says Xiao-Chun Wu, a paleobiologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa.
