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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Gigantic toothy swimming reptile was among the largest beasts ever

A huge fang suggests that the biggest of the extinct marine creatures called ichthyosaurs could be either toothy or toothless.
The largest ichthyosaur tooth base held in a human hand.

A tooth fragment from an extinct swimming reptile called an ichthyosaur hints at the creature’s daunting size. Credit: Laurent Garbay/Univ. Bonn and Rosi Roth/Univ. Zurich

Big-toothed animals that swam in the Triassic seas grew as large as sperm whales, fossil evidence suggests1.

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Nature 605, 196 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01199-9

References

  1. Sander, P. M., Romero Pérez de Villar, P., Furrer, H. & Wintrich, T. J. Vertebr. Paleontol. https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2021.2046017 (2022).

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