Bizarre ‘sea monster’ discovered in India

A set of bones were recently discovered in India that belonged to a sea monster who prowled in deep waters around 150 million years ago.

Being the size of a small boat, the discovery is an unbroken skeleton of a group of marine reptiles, ichthyosaur (fish lizard) that were known to terrorize the seas during their time period. It is believed that these animals were whales of their time with huge eyes, narrow jaws and cone-shaped teeth. The Indian ichthyosaur is the first Jurassic sea monster discovered in that area.

Paleontologist Guntupalli Prasad exclaimed, “This is a remarkable discovery. Not only because it is the first Jurassic ichthyosaur record from India, but also it throws light on the evolution and diversity of ichthyosaurs in the Indo-Madagascan region of the former Gondwanaland and India's biological connectivity with other continents in the Jurassic.”

Scientists discover bizarre creature in hidden grave

Science Alert reported, according to their estimation, the creature would have been around 5.5 meters long. “We could infer from wear patterns on its teeth that this ichthyosaur was a top-tier predator that fed on hard and abrasive food material including marine mollusks, fish, and possibly other marine reptiles.”

Excavating the creature in the village of Lodai, India’s Gujarat province, was a tough work and required 1500 man-hours of digging to retrieve the creature embedded in an extremely hard sedimentary rock. The finding also suggested that a huge seaway at one time crossed the ancient continent of Gondwanaland, cutting through land that is now split across western India, Madagascar and South America, reported National Geographic.

A paleontologist not related with the study, Steve Brusatte expressed, “This is a fantastic discovery, and is by far the best ichthyosaur skeleton ever found in India. This new skeleton has the potential to reveal many secrets about ichthyosaur evolution and biogeography.”