Platypterygius
| Platypterygius | ||||||||||||
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Platypterygius kiprjanov |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Lower to Upper Cretaceous ( Berriasium to Cenomanium ) | ||||||||||||
| 145 to 93.9 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Platypterygius | ||||||||||||
| Huene , 1922 | ||||||||||||
Platypterygius is a genus of ichthyosaurs whose fossil record rangesfrom the Lower Cretaceous ( Berriasium ) to the early Upper Cretaceous ( Cenomanium ).
Fossils of the animals have been found on all continents with the exception of Africa and Antarctica , but especially in Australia; the first finds come in 1865 on the Flinders River in Queensland . They were first as Ichthyosaurus australis described , then in platypterygius australis renamed and finally platypterygius longmani assigned. The genus Platypterygius also includes the geologically youngest ichthyosaur fossil. It comes from the Upper Cenomanium of Bavaria and was described in 1994.
features
Platypterygius had the typical spindle-shaped body of the "ichthyosaur" and could reach a length of 5.40 to 6.90 meters. The jaws were long and narrow, the eyes significantly smaller than those of the closely related and giant-eyed genus Ophthalmosaurus . The forefins of Platypterygius were the widest of all ichthyosaurs ( Platypterygius = "broad fingers"), the fingers increased to a total of ten ( polydactyly ). A total of 30 individual bones were counted in the longest finger. The caudal fin was symmetrical and hypocerk . Like all ichthyosaurs of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods , Platypterygius swam in a thunniform manner , that is, simply by striking the tail fin. In 2001, a computed tomography scan of a skull revealed that the bones of the inner ear were too thick to allow echolocation like toothed whales . However, there were indications of electroreceptors similar to those of some fish today, especially sharks .
A young animal was found in the body of a fossil of Platypterygius from the Upper Cretaceous Australia. Numerous fish, belemnites , young sea turtles of the Protostegidae family and a bird from the group of enantiornithes have also been found in the epigastric region.
literature
- Richard Ellis : Sea Dragons. Predators of the Prehistoric Oceans. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence KS 2003, ISBN 0-7006-1269-6 , pp. 90-92.
Individual evidence
Web links
- Researchers analyze battle scars that are 120 million years old . Report from May 5, 2011 on Spiegel Online