Topic ID #11107 - posted 5/4/2011 10:16 AM

Battle Scars Found on an Ancient Sea Monster



Jennifer Palmer

Webmaster
Battle Scars Found on an Ancient Sea Monster

ScienceDaily (May 4, 2011) — Scars on the jaw of a 120-million-year-old marine reptile suggest that life might not have been easy in the ancient polar oceans. The healed bite wounds were probably made by a member of the same species. Such injuries give important clues about the social behaviour of extinct sea creatures from the time of dinosaurs.

The find is described in a forthcoming issue of Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.

Found in the remote desert near the town of Marree in northern South Australia, the fossilised skeleton belonged to an ichthyosaur, a dolphin-like marine reptile that lived during the 'Age of Dinosaurs'. Ichthyosaurs were fast swimming predators that fed on fish and squid-like animals. Adults would have been around six metres in length and had long-snouted heads with over 100 pointed, crocodile-like teeth.


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