Blue whales have been considered the largest creatures to ever live on Earth. With a maximum length of nearly 30 meters and weighing nearly 200 tons, they are the all-time undisputed heavyweight champions of the animal kingdom.
Now, digging on a beach in Somerset, UK, a team of British paleontologists found the remains of an ichthyosaur, a marine reptile that could give the whales some competition. “It is quite remarkable to think that gigantic, blue-whale-sized ichthyosaurs were swimming in the oceans around what was the UK during the Triassic Period,” said Dean Lomax, a paleontologist at the University of Manchester who led the study.
Giant jawbones
Ichthyosaurs were found in the seas through much of the Mesozoic era, appearing as early as 250 million years ago. They had four limbs that looked like paddles, vertical tail fins that extended downward in most species, and generally looked like large, reptilian dolphins with elongated narrow jaws lined with teeth. And some of them were really huge. The largest ichthyosaur skeleton so far was found in British Columbia, Canada, measured 21 meters, and belonged to a particularly massive ichthyosaur called Shonisaurus sikanniensis. But it seems they could get even larger than that.
What Lomax’s team found in Somerset was a surangular, a long, curved bone that all reptiles have at the top of the lower jaw, behind the teeth. The bone measured 2.3 meters—compared to the surangular found in the Shonisaurus sikanniensis skeleton, it was 25 percent larger. Using simple scaling and assuming the same body proportions, Lomax’s team estimated the size of this newly found ichthyosaur at somewhere between 22 and 26 meters, which would make it the largest marine reptile ever. But there was one more thing.
Examining the surangular, the team did not find signs of the external fundamental system (EFS), which is a band of tissue present in the outermost cortex of the bone. Its formation marks a slowdown in bone growth, indicating skeletal maturity. In other words, the giant ichthyosaur was most likely young and still growing when it died.
Correcting the past
In 1846, five large bones were found at the Aust Cliff near Bristol in southwestern England. Dug out from the upper Triassic rock formation, they were dubbed “dinosaurian limb bone shafts” and were exhibited in the Bristol Museum, where one of them was destroyed by bombing during World War II.
But in 2005, Peter M. Galton, a British paleontologist then working at the University of Bridgeport, noticed something strange in one of the remaining Aust Cliff bones. He described it as an “unusual foramen” and suggested it was a nutrient passage. Later studies generally kept attributing those bones to dinosaurs but pointed out things like an unusual microstructure that was difficult to explain.
According to Lomax, all this confusion was because the Aust Cliff bones did not belong to dinosaurs and were not parts of limbs. He pointed out that the nutrient foramen morphology, shape, and microstructure matched with the ichthyosaur’s bone found in Somerset. The difference was that the EFS—the mark of mature bones—was present on the Aust Cliff bones. If Lomax is correct and they really were parts of ichthyosaurs’ surangular, they belonged to a grown individual.
And using the same scaling technique applied to the Somerset surangular, Lomax estimated this grown individual to be over 30 meters long—slightly larger than the biggest confirmed blue whale.
Looming extinction
“Late Triassic ichthyosaurs likely reached the known biological limits of vertebrates in terms of size. So much about these giants is still shrouded by mystery, but one fossil at a time, we will be able to unravel their secrets,” said Marcello Perillo, a member of the Lomax team responsible for examining the internal structure of the bones.
This mystery beast didn’t last long, though. The surangular bone found in Somerset was buried just beneath a layer full of seismite and tsunamite rocks that indicate the onset of the end-Triassic mass extinction event, one of the five mass extinctions in Earth’s history. The Ichthyotian severnensis, as Lomax and his team named the species, probably managed to reach an unbelievable size but was wiped out soon after.
The end-Triassic mass extinction was not the end of all ichthyosaurs, though. They survived but never reached similar sizes again. They faced competition from plesiosaurs and sharks that were more agile and swam much faster, and they likely competed for the same habitats and food sources. The last known ichthyosaurs went extinct roughly 90 million years ago.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
