Scientists have uncovered new clues suggesting a fossil site in Nevada may have been an ancient maternity ward where giant marine reptiles came to give birth, rather than the site of a massive die-off as previously suspected.
Adult and newly born ichthyosaurs called Shonisaurus gather in the Triassic seas more than 200 million years ago in this illustration.
The site is famous for its fossils from giant ichthyosaurs — reptiles that dominated the ancient seas and could grow up to the size of a school bus. The creatures — the name means fish lizard — were underwater predators with large paddle-shaped flippers and long jaws full of teeth. Once a tropical sea, the site — part of Nevada’s Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park — now sits in a dry, dusty landscape near an abandoned mining town, said lead author Randy Irmis, a paleontologist at the University of Utah.
“Finding a place to give birth separated from a place where you might feed is really common in the modern world — among whales, among sharks,” Pyenson said.Testing the chemicals in the dirt didn’t turn up any signs of volcanic eruptions or huge shifts to the local environment. And the geology showed that the reptiles were preserved on the ocean floor pretty far from the shore — meaning they probably didn’t die in a mass beaching event, Irmis said.
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