(ORDO NEWS) — A group of Chinese and Canadian paleontologists working in southern China have reported the discovery of a previously unknown marine reptile from the dinosaur era.
According to the Xinhua news agency, the article by the authors of the discovery was published in PeerJ magazine.
It describes the fossilized bones of some vertebrates that were discovered by an international team of paleontologists in an ancient formation in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
The researchers paid special attention to the description of an ancient marine reptile, which may have been a relative of ichthyosaurs.
The latter are known to have flourished during most of the Mesozoic era, i.e. from 251 to 65.5 million years ago.
Representatives of this group of creatures were most diverse in the Triassic and Jurassic periods, when dinosaurs reigned on Earth.
According to experts, the discovered reptile is the same age as dinosaurs. Scientists have obtained quite a lot of fossil material, including the front part of the skeleton, including some vertebrae and ribs, limb bones and abdominal bones.
During the analysis, paleontologists compared these remains with the remains of other creatures of the same period.
As a result, they concluded that the bones belong to a species of marine reptile previously unknown to science.
It was named Baisesaurus robustus. According to researchers, this reptile reached three meters in length. This makes it the largest of all Early Triassic ichthyosaur-like reptiles ever found in China.
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