Hundreds of millions of years ago, reptilian predators called ichthyosaurs swam the seas. Their fossils look fearsome. But paleobiologist Ryosuke Motani of U.C. Davis says they may have looked more like friendly dolphins.
“Maybe in life ichthyosaurs would have been cute—at least the smaller ones.”
Motani’s team studied one such specimen found in southwest China. It was 240 million years old—15 feet long. But it seemed to have some extra bones in it—which Motani’s team determined to be the remains of a 13-foot-long thalattosaur, or “sea lizard,” the ichthyosaur had swallowed.
And, spoiler alert, the only reason they were able to see this animal in the belly of the ichthyosaur is that this gigantic meal never got digested. The ichthyosaur died soon after swallowing it.
Motani was careful to say they’re not sure exactly why the ichthyosaur perished. But the specimen has a broken neck. So he gave a speculative