research worker have uncovered aLower Cretaceous burying ground containing the fossils of nearly 50 ichthyosaursby a glacier in southerly Chile . Named for “ Pisces lizards , ” these nautical reptilian resemble giant Pisces the Fishes or even dolphin , and likely fed on calamary - ascendant and Pisces near the coastline .
After three operose trips to the vicinity of Tyndall Glacier in the Torres del Paine National Park of Chile , an international squad lead byWolfgang Stinnesbeck of Ruprecht - Karls - Universität Heidelbergfound a total of 46 vocalise and virtually complete ichthyosaur specimens in an Early Cretaceous deposit ( about 150 million to 100 million years ago ) . These passing well preserved remains include both adult and juvenile , as well as easygoing tissue and even embryo inside a specimen .
The team temporarily assigned the new chance on skeletons to four different species in the out familyOphthalmosauridae .
The abundance of these almost all phrase ichthyosaur skeletons in the glacier area suggests that they fall dupe to a series of mass - mortality events because of wooden-headed , sediment - filled currents travel downslope through a Cuban sandwich canyon . The ancient reptiles likely mislay predilection , drown , and were then puff into the deep ocean by turbulent mudflows . Their bodies ended up in an oxygen - deficient watershed , where they were immediately engraft by the cascade of fine deposit .
The rock moderate the fossil were later exposed by the thaw glacier . Very few ichthyosaurs have been found in South America : a few rib cage bits and vertebrae have been previously unearthed . These fresh skeletons were discover along with ammonites , nonextant cephalopods called belemnites , oyster - corresponding inoceramid bivalves , and fishes , as well as industrial plant .
Ichthyosaurs may have died out before the dinosaurs on demesne and flying reptile in the atmosphere . As Stinnesbeckexplains to LiveScience , orbicular depletion of oxygen in the oceans – possibly due to volcanism – may have cause the extinction of these seagoing reptiles .
Theworkwas publish in theGeological Society of America ( GSA ) Bulletinlast week .
[ ViaLiveScience ]
range : Nobu Tamura viaWikimedia
