Many people may not have heard of Ichthyosaurs, because this species went extinct about 90 million years ago, and they look like a combination of fish and dolphins, but they are certainly not the offspring of a fish species and a dolphin hybrid! From the time calculation, we know that the time of extinction of dinosaurs is about 25 million years later than the time of extinction of ichthyosaurs, and ichthyosaurs and huge plesiosaurs are the real overlords in the Mesozoic marine world.
The first time humans discovered the species was in 1699, when researchers found fossil fragments of ichthyosaurs in Wales. It should be known that the distribution range of ichthyosaurs on the earth is not small, so a fossil of ichthyosaurs with a length of 13 meters has also been found in Guizhou Province, Which is also the largest wreckage found in China, known as "priceless treasure".
In the world, Canada found a 23-meter-long ichthyosaur fossil in 1992, which also makes us curious about how many meters the largest ichthyosaur can grow!
Recently, about 180 million years old, about 10 meters long, the remains of a huge "sea dragon", that is, the fossil of ichthyosaur, have reappeared on the earth! This time, the giant ichthyosaur fossil was found in a british nature reserve, which is the largest ichthyosaur remains found in the UK so far, and it is still very well preserved.
British paleontologist Dean Lomax is very excited to say that although the United Kingdom has also found some ichthyosaur remains before this, but it is the first time that it has been preserved so intact and so large, this unprecedented new discovery will become one of the most important discoveries in the history of paleontology in china.
The Latin scientific name of the ichthyosauria, if directly translated into Chinese, is actually a fish-shaped lizard, the appearance of the ichthyosaur is very special, although the overall look like a fish, but also like the dolphins that everyone sees in the aquarium. The breathing of ichthyosaurs is done by the lungs, so after they live in the ocean, they cannot lurk underwater for a long time, and they need to swim above the surface of the water for breathing and ventilation every once in a while.
The saying that the ichthyosaur "looks at the six roads and listens to the eight directions" is not exaggerated, no matter how big or small the ichthyosaur is, it has a pair of eyes that look particularly large. Moreover, there is also a special structure of the sclera ring on the eye, which ensures that the ichthyosaur not only has good eyesight, but also can be protected by the scleral ring, plus the hearing of the ichthyosaur is also very outstanding, and other reptiles at that time are often difficult to compare with. Therefore, even if the light in the depths of the ocean is not good and very dim, they can lock on to the subtle movement of their prey, becoming a veritable sea overlord of that era!
After the scientists' study of the remains of the ichthyosaur, it is speculated that when this species swims in the sea, it should be particularly like the cut that is easier to see today, because the directional rudder of the ichthyosaur is on their forelimbs, and the tail part of the body actually only acts as a pusher, and when slowly swimming in the water, it can be achieved by sliding the sea water through the two forelimbs, but if you want to hunt food quickly, you need to activate the big tail.
So far, however, scientists have not yet figured out how ichthyosaur species entered the ocean from land and what this long evolutionary process has gone through, but from their body structure, it can be seen that the ichthyosaurs that dominate the sea have indeed completely lost the ability to survive on land. As for how ichthyosaurs reproduce, there is no definitive answer for the time being, but more scientists believe that it should be oviparous, because the fossils of ichthyosaurs unearthed in Germany show that inside the abdominal cavity of the ichthyosaur remains, in addition to fish and foot food, there are ichthyosaur larvae, and some of them are outside the cloaca.
In addition, the question of how long the ichthyosaurs could grow up to be is unclear, as the remains of ichthyosaurs found so far suggest that individuals with a body size of more than 20 meters and an estimated weight of more than 80 tons exist. Although ichthyosaurs looked a bit like fish, they were not fish animals, and ichthyosaurs had a back ridge, but were large sea-dwelling reptiles.
The time of the birth of ichthyosaurs on the earth can be traced back to 250 million years ago, but this species that dominates the sea is still extinct, and as for the reason for their disappearance from the earth, it can be said that it is the same as the extinction of dinosaurs, which can be regarded as an "unsolved mystery". From the current research, more evidence points to the extinction of Ichthyosaurs, which should be due to the huge changes that occurred on the earth during that period, coupled with its own evolution can not keep up, which led to the extinction of the entire population.
Every time you talk about mass extinction, the average person may feel that it is a very distant thing, but in fact, biological extinction has never been far away from us, even in this era, there have been animals and plants disappearing from the earth, and there are many endangered species on the verge of extinction, say a Yangtze River white sturgeon that everyone may have heard of, they are not just declared extinct not long ago?
Don't say that death is the end of all life, because this is indeed a basic fact that humans cannot change at present, but global warming has made extreme weather events more, in addition to the natural laws of the evolution of the earth, there are indeed human factors, such as indiscriminate logging, destruction of natural habitats of animals, and so on. Therefore, a plan like the ten-year ban on fishing in the Yangtze River is indeed not only protecting the animals in the Yangtze River, but also protecting the earth on which we humans live.