Strange creature 30m long: Thought it was a dinosaur, turns out it's something more monstrous!
Scientists have been "lost" for more than 170 years because the strange, giant remains of a mysterious creature appeared near Bristol, England .
According to Sci-News, the mysterious creature appeared at Aust Cliff - a famous fossil mine in England - in 1850 with a large cylindrical bone, causing it to be mistaken for a titanosaur. (titanosaurs), the world's largest group of dinosaurs.
It was not until the early twentieth century that some paleontologists suspected it was not a dinosaur.
A seemingly absurd hypothesis is posed: It could be an ichthyosaur (also known as an ichthyosaur) with unbelievable size!
One of the bone fragments found, pinned to the ancient seabed - (Photo: BONN UNIVERSITY).
Ichthyosaur is one of the aquatic relatives of dinosaurs, with an extremely bizarre shape, like a chaotic hybrid product between dinosaurs and fish.
It's absurd to say, because most ichthyosaurs are small in the monster world of the Triassic - Jurassic - Cretaceous periods. Most ichthyosaurs are a few meters in size, while the "greatest" species of this group are just over 10 meters long.
Ichthyosaurs are a group of creatures that still have many mysteries - (Graphic photo).
In a new study, Professor Martin Sander and Dr. Marcello Perillo from the University of Bonn (Germany) reanalyzed samples to find out the truth about strange creatures in the UK.
They used a special microscope to demonstrate that the creature's bone walls contained unusual structures.
It contains long fibers of mineralized collagen, interwoven in a very different way than most other animal bones. However, scientists also found something similar: Another large ichthyosaur from Canada also has a similar bone structure.
The discovery confirmed that the giant fossil bones found in the UK belonged to an ichthyosaur, rather than any land animal , according to the article published in the scientific journal Peerj.
Geological evidence also shows that the area where the fossil appeared 200 million years ago - the time when the animal lived, during the Triassic period - was once an ocean.
The new calculations also agree with old estimates, showing that the creature was at least 25-30m long when alive. It may have used its pointed snout to stab its prey as orcas do today, with strong jaws helping to complete the rest.
This shows that the scientific community should change some perspectives on this group of ancient sea monsters. According to researchers from the University of Bonn, this is not necessarily inexplicable.
Before this species was born, its ancestors evolved about 250 million years ago. By the 200 million year mark, most species in this group had become extinct.
The ichthyosaurs that we often find are all descendants of the Jurassic - Cretaceous period. Perhaps then the ichthyosaur species evolved to become smaller, more suitable for the new environment.
Therefore, it cannot be said that their ancestors were once giant monsters. The early Triassic period was also the ancestral period of many other giant creatures that appeared on Earth, such as whales. The 25-30m length of this ichthyosaur is still smaller than the blue whale.
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