Bones of giant 100ft sea predator with ‘huge jaws’ found and it may have used ‘killer whale’ attack technique on prey
MYSTERIOUS fossilized bone fragments found all over Europe have baffled scientists for years.
A new study suggests all the ancient bones belonged to one terrifying species.
Researchers from the University of Bonn re-analyzed the bones found in regions across Western and Central Europe since the 19th Century.
They now think the fossils come from the lower jaw of a giant ancient sea creature called an ichthyosaur.
Ichthyosaurs lived around the same time as the dinosaurs and were large ocean predators.
Fossil evidence suggests they lived from around 250 million years ago and died out about 90 million years ago.
It's thought they weighed up to 80 tonnes and grew over 65 feet long.
That's over twice the size of a killer whale but the ancient beasts may have hunted just like the modern species.
The creatures are best known for their large mouths with huge spikey teeth.
Scientists have now published their new ichthyosaur findings in the journal PeerJ.
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"Very large unidentified elongate and rounded fossil bone segments of uncertain origin recovered from different Rhaetian (Late Triassic) fossil localities across Europe have been puzzling the paleontological community since the second half of the 19th century," the researchers wrote.
They explained how different hypotheses for what the bones could be have been given over the years but no conclusion was made.
Some researchers had already suggested the bones belonged to an ichthyosaur while others suggested they giant amphibian bones or came from dinosaurs.
Researchers Marcello Perillo and Professor Martin Sander compared the mysterious bones to other ichthyosaur remains.
"Bones of similar species generally have a similar structure," Sander said.
"Osteohistology—the analysis of bone tissue—can thus be used to draw conclusions about the animal group from which the find originates."
Why did the dinosaurs die out?
Here's what you need to know...
- The dinosaur wipe-out was a sudden mass extinction event on Earth
- It wiped out roughly three-quarters of our planet’s plant and animal species around 66million years ago
- This event marked the end of the Cretaceous period, and opened the Cenozoic Era, which we’re still in today
- Scientists generally believe that a massive comet or asteroid around 9 miles wide crashed into Earth, devastating the planet
- This impact is said to have sparked a lingering “impact winter”, severely harming plant life and the food chain that relied on it
- More recent research suggests that this impact “ignited” major volcanic activity, which also led to the wiping-out of life
- Some research has suggested that dinosaur numbers were already declining due to climate changes at the time
- But a study published in March 2019 claims that dinosaurs were likely “thriving” before the extinction event