For its last meal, an ancient marine reptile called an ichthyosaur may have bitten off more than it could chew.
The dolphinlike creature was nearly 5 meters long, about the length of a canoe. And its belly contained the remains of a lizardlike reptile called a thalattosaur that was almost as long: 4 meters. This is the longest known prey of a marine reptile from the dinosaur age, and may be the oldest direct evidence.
Motani and colleagues examined the nearly complete skeleton of an adult ichthyosaur that was unearthed in southwestern China in 2010. The reptile, from the genus Guizhouichthyosaurus, lived during the Triassic Period about 240 million years ago. Upon closer inspection of a big lump of bones in the creature’s belly, Motani’s team discovered that the last thing the ichthyosaur ate was the body of a thalattosaur, sans head and tail. The thalattosaur remains show little evidence of being degraded by stomach acid, suggesting the ichthyosaur died shortly after its enormous meal.
These fossils provide “pretty good evidence that the bigger animal ate the smaller one,” says vertebrate paleontologist Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the study. “If this really is the case, it’s quite stunning,” because the predator was not much larger than its prey — at least in terms of length. The ichthyosaur is thought to have been roughly seven times more massive than the whip-thin thalattosaur.
The dolphinlike creature was nearly 5 meters long, about the length of a canoe. And its belly contained the remains of a lizardlike reptile called a thalattosaur that was almost as long: 4 meters. This is the longest known prey of a marine reptile from the dinosaur age, and may be the oldest direct evidence.
Motani and colleagues examined the nearly complete skeleton of an adult ichthyosaur that was unearthed in southwestern China in 2010. The reptile, from the genus Guizhouichthyosaurus, lived during the Triassic Period about 240 million years ago. Upon closer inspection of a big lump of bones in the creature’s belly, Motani’s team discovered that the last thing the ichthyosaur ate was the body of a thalattosaur, sans head and tail. The thalattosaur remains show little evidence of being degraded by stomach acid, suggesting the ichthyosaur died shortly after its enormous meal.
These fossils provide “pretty good evidence that the bigger animal ate the smaller one,” says vertebrate paleontologist Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the study. “If this really is the case, it’s quite stunning,” because the predator was not much larger than its prey — at least in terms of length. The ichthyosaur is thought to have been roughly seven times more massive than the whip-thin thalattosaur.
