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The earliest marine reptiles arose in the Permian. During the Mesozoic many groups of reptiles became adapted to life in the seas, including ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, nothosaurs, placodonts, sea turtles, thalattosaurs and thalattosuchians. Marine reptiles were less numerous after mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous.
A skeleton of the blue whale, the largest animal, extant or extinct, ever discovered. Mounted outside the Long Marine Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The largest blue whale ever reliably recorded measured 98ft (30m) long. A peregrine falcon, the world's fastest animal. Peregrines use gravity and aerodynamics to achieve ...
Marine reptiles are reptiles which have become secondarily adapted for an aquatic or semiaquatic life in a marine environment. Only about 100 of the 12,000 extant reptile species and subspecies are classed as marine reptiles, including marine iguanas , sea snakes , sea turtles and saltwater crocodiles .
Rorquals (/ ˈ r ɔːr k w əl z /) are the largest group of baleen whales, comprising the family Balaenopteridae, which contains nine extant species in two genera.They include the largest known animal that has ever lived, the blue whale, which can reach 180 tonnes (200 short tons), and the fin whale, which reaches 120 tonnes (130 short tons); even the smallest of the group, the northern minke ...
As embryos, vertebrates still have a notochord; as adults, all but the jawless fishes have a vertebral column, made of bone or cartilage, instead. [4] Vertebrate embryos have pharyngeal arches; in adult fish, these support the gills, while in adult tetrapods they develop into other structures. [8] [9]
There could be a new contender for heaviest animal to ever live. While today's blue whale has long held the title, scientists have dug up fossils from an ancient giant that could tip the scales ...
The blue whale is the largest animal known ever to have existed. [42] [43] [44] Some studies have estimated that certain shastasaurid ichthyosaurs and the ancient whale Perucetus could have rivalled the blue whale in size, with Perucetus also being heavier than the blue whale with a mean weight of 180 t (180 long tons; 200 short tons).
The pygmy blue whale is the only one of the three identifiable subspecies to be found regularly in tropical waters. It occurs from the sub-Antarctic zone to the southern Indian Ocean and southwestern Pacific Ocean, breeding in the Indian and South Atlantic oceans, and travelling south to above the Antarctic to feed, [4] [7] although they very rarely cross the Antarctic Convergence.