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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.
The blue whale and other baleen whales, the gentle giants of the sea, sift huge quantities of tiny prey from ocean water using a filter-feeding system in their mouths. Fossils unearthed in China's ...
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 .
They have no regular outline, although the lower surface is somewhat concave, and the upper surface is always flattened; Porifera (sponges), multicellular organisms that have bodies full of pores and channels allowing water to circulate through them; Priapulida, or penis worms, are a phylum of marine worms that live marine mud. They are named ...
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).
Blue whales have returned to a part of the Indian Ocean where the species was once wiped out by whaling decades ago. Researchers in the Seychelles have captured footage of the marine mammals in ...
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 ...
In modern times, Alfred Romer (1894–1973) wrote what has been termed the definitive textbook on the subject, called Vertebrate Paleontology. [8] It shows the progression of evolution in fossil fish, and amphibians and reptiles through comparative anatomy, including a list of all the (then) known fossil vertebrate genera .