When large marine animals like whales die, they sink down to the seabed. Once their flesh has been stripped away by ...

Long before whales ruled the oceans, ancient bone-eating worms were already thriving on the seafloor, feasting on the ...

Long-necked plesiosaurs, shark-shaped ichthyosaurs, toothy mosasaurs and many more saurians were swimming through the ancient seas, their success underwritten by a suite of anatomical specializations.

A remarkable plesiosaur fossil reveals that the extinct reptiles had scales like modern sea turtles, unlike the ichthyosaurs that lived during the same period By James Woodford 6 February 2025 ...

Collection strengths. The collection’s highlights are on display in the Museum’s Fossil Marine Reptile gallery, including: the first ichthyosaur skull, now called Temnodontosaurus platyodon, ...

The team originally theorized the skin might possess the dolphinlike, scaleless qualities of an ichthyosaur, but were surprised at what they found: areas of both scaly and smooth skin.

The discovery of a giant 100 million-year-old marine reptile’s skeleton in Australia has been hailed by researchers as a breakthrough that may provide vital clues about prehistoric life.

Mr. Marx and colleagues analyzed three soft-tissue skin samples, each about the size of a fingernail, from a flipper and the tail of a 183 million-year-old long-necked plesiosaur specimen.

These bone-eating communities are ancient, and have been on Earth for at least 100 million years. Before whales existed, bone-eating worms were eating into the skeletons of mosasaurs, ichthyosaurs and ...