Prehistoric Puzzles
Stranger Than Fiction
Over many millennia, all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures have swum through the seas. Some eventually crawled out and evolved into land inhabitants. But what of those that stayed beneath the waves?
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| Liopleurodon ferox, a huge carnivorous reptile that lived 160 million years ago! Illustration: Nobu Tamura |
Drops in sea levels mean that what is now land could at one point have been the bottom of the sea. For many years, scientists have been exploring these graveyards for prehistoric creatures, frozen for millions of years in the form of fossils.
Unearthing the fossils is like peering into a window on the past, and they have unveiled some creatures so weird, they’re indeed stranger than fiction!
Imagine a crocodile with four paddle-like limbs and measuring up to 7 metres long, and you have the Liopleurodon ferox, a huge carnivorous reptile that lived 160 million years ago. The skull of the formidable L. ferox measured about 1.5 metres!
The paddles would have allowed L. ferox to propel through the water, but the reptile may not have been an efficient swimmer. Scientists believed it was an ambush predator that scanned the water for the smell of prey. With its powerful jaws and teeth that could grow up to 7 centimetres long, L. ferox was an apex predator of the seas. It is interesting to note that no animal alive today uses the same form of locomotion as Liopleurodon. This evolutionary masterpiece has been lost in time.
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