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.

PLOS ONE, 2024.  DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0300289

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Early Life and Education

Jeremy Hansen grew up on a farm near the community of Ailsa Craig, Ontario, where he attended elementary school. His family moved to Ingersoll,
Ontario, where he attended Ingersoll District Collegiate Institute. At age 12 he joined the 614 Royal Canadian Air Cadet Squadron in London, Ontario. At 16 he earned his Air Cadet
glider pilot wings and at 17 he earned his private pilot licence and wings. After graduating from high school and Air Cadets, Hansen was accepted for officer training in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). He was trained at Chilliwack, British Columbia, and the Royal Military College at Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu,
Quebec. Hansen then enrolled in the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston,
Ontario. In 1999, he completed a Bachelor of Science in space science with First Class Honours and was a Top Air Force Graduate from the Royal Military College. In 2000, he completed his Master of Science in physics with a focus on wide field of view satellite tracking.   

CAF Pilot

In 2003, Jeremy Hansen completed training as a CF-18 fighter pilot with the 410 Tactical Fighter Operational Training Squadron at Cold Lake, Alberta.
From 2004 to 2009, he served by flying CF-18s with the 441 Tactical Fighter Squadron and the 409 Tactical Fighter Squadron. He also flew as Combat Operations Officer at 4 Wing Cold Lake. Hansen’s responsibilities included NORAD operations effectiveness,
Arctic flying operations and deployed exercises. He was promoted to the rank of colonel in 2017. (See also Royal Canadian Air Force.)

Career as an Astronaut

In May 2009, Jeremy Hansen and David Saint-Jacques were chosen out of 5,351 applicants in the Canadian Space Agency’s
(CSA) third Canadian Astronaut Recruitment Campaign. He graduated from Astronaut Candidate Training in 2011 and began working at the Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas, as capsule communicator (capcom, the person in Mission Control who speaks directly
to the astronauts in space.

As a CSA astronaut, Hansen continues to develop his skills. In 2013, he underwent training in the High Arctic and learned how to conduct geological fieldwork (see Arctic Archipelago;
Geology). That same year, he participated in the European Space Agency’s CAVES program in Sardinia, Italy. In that human performance experiment Hansen lived underground for six days.
In 2014, Hansen was a member of the crew of NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 19. He spent seven days off Key Largo, Florida, living in the Aquarius habitat on the ocean floor, which is used to simulate conditions of the International
Space Station and different gravity fields. In 2017, Hansen became the first Canadian to lead a NASA astronaut class, in which he trained astronaut candidates from Canada and the United States.  

Did you know?

Hansen has been instrumental in encouraging young people to become part of the STEM (Science, Technology,
Engineering, Mathematics) workforce with the aim of encouraging future generations of space explorers.
His inspirational work in Canada includes flying a historical “Hawk One” F-86 Sabre jet.

Artemis II

In April 2023, Hansen was chosen along with Americans Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman to crew NASA’s Artemis II mission to the moon. The mission, scheduled for no earlier
than September 2025 after a delay due to technical problems, marks NASA’s first manned moon voyage since Apollo 17 in 1972. The Artemis II astronauts will not land on the lunar
surface, but will orbit the moon in an Orion spacecraft. They will conduct tests in preparation for future manned moon landings, the establishment of an orbiting space station called Lunar Gateway, or Gateway, and a base on the moon’s surface where astronauts
can live and work for extended periods. The path taken by Orion will carry the astronauts farther from Earth than any humans have previously travelled. Hansen’s participation in Artemis II is a direct result of Canada’s contribution of Canadarm3
to Lunar Gateway. (See also Canadarm; Canadian Space Agency.)

“Being part of the Artemis II crew is both exciting and humbling. I’m excited to leverage my experience, training and knowledge to take on this challenging mission on behalf of Canada. I’m humbled by the incredible contributions and hard work of so many
Canadians that have made this opportunity a reality. I am proud and honoured to represent my country on this historic mission.” – Jeremy Hansen (Canadian Space Agency, 2023)

Did you know?

On his Artemis II trip, Hansen will wear an Indigenous-designed mission patch created for him by Anishinaabe artist Henry Guimond.

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Honours and Awards

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These fish are also transparent

Danionella cerebrum may be small fry, but the noises they make are anything but.

Think louder than an elephant.

These tiny fish, which measure up to 12 millimetres long, were the subject of a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Feb. 24.

Researchers from the Charité Universitätsmedizin, a university hospital in Berlin, and the Senckenberg Society Natural History Collections in Dresden, both in Germany, collaborated on the study.

Their research uncovered the apparatus that allows male Danionella cerebrum fish to make loud, pulsing noises, and theorizes why this behaviour evolved in the first place.

Researchers recorded the fish in a tank. This video is slowed down 10 times to see how they moved. (Video credit: Verity Cook/Charité)

How did the study work?

The researchers put four Danionella cerebrum in a tank.They captured both audio and visual recordings, and performed scans, dissections and gene analyses.
 
Because these fish have transparent skin, cameras could see and record what happens inside their bodies to make such loud noises.

A study model shows how the Danionella cerebrum creates its sounds. A drumming muscle (green) contracts, pulling the rib (red), which fits into a groove in the cartilage (light blue) and builds tension. The tension is released and the cartilage snaps back into place, striking the swim bladder (purple). (Video credit: Verity Cook/Charité)

First, a special drumming muscle contracts.
 
It pulls on a rib that moves something called the drumming cartilage out of place — a bit like stretching a rubber band.
 
Then, suddenly, the drumming cartilage snaps back into position so fast it strikes the swim bladder (a special organ fish have to help them swim).
 
This impact produces the loud pulse we hear.

Click play on the video at the top of the page to hear the Danionella cerebrum for yourself!

Why so loud?

The noises made by male Danionella cerebrum can be as loud as 147 decibels at a distance of one body length away.

That’s about as loud as a jet engine would sound taking off 100 metres away from you.

The researchers believe these pulses are a way for the fish to communicate.

Danionella cerebrum’s native habitat are shallow, murky waters in Myanmar.

The scientists say this lack of visibility could mean sound communication evolved to help the fish locate mates.

The Danionella cerebrum is about as long as the diameter of a typical AA battery.  (Image credit: Senckenberg, with graphic design by Philip Street/CBC)

A unique opportunity

The study broadens our understanding of how animals make noise and why these behaviours might have evolved.
 
Now, the scientists hope to study the four other species in the Danionella family, to compare how they produce sounds.

Click play to hear the itsy-bitsy fish for yourself!

Check out these other animal news videos:

Have more questions? Want to tell us how we’re doing? Use the “send us feedback” link below. ⬇️⬇️⬇️

TOP IMAGE CREDIT: Senckenberg, with graphic design by Philip Street/CBC

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