The discovery of a fossilisedichthyosaurhas revealed more about what happened to the ancient sea creatures after expiry than during spirit , but it appear both were authoritative to the bionomics of the Jurassic ocean .
The 3 m longOphthalmosauruswas discovered in Dorset , England when a route was make through the Late Jurassic mudstones in which it lay . The latterly get wind genusgets its name from its huge eye socket , indicate ithunted at peachy depths . Ophthalmosaurus , like all ichthyosaur , had a basically dolphin - shaped body , and filled a similar recession in the oceans of the time .
Dr. Silvia Danise of Plymouth University found narrow-minded grooves on the fossil ’s costa bone and conclude these were from fish picking at its flesh after it sank to the bottom of the ocean . She attributed superstar - shaped marks to sea urchins , eating bacteria that had fed on rest physical body .
As Danise explains inNature Communications , the carcasses of cetacean mammal , known aswhale fall , are home torich solid food webs , and the record from this ancient version break both similarities and differences .
“ The early ‘ mobile - pack rat ’ and ‘ enrichment - opportunist ’ stage were not succeeded by a ‘ sulphophilic stage ’ characterized by chemosynthetic shellfish , but instead the bones were colonized by microbial gym mat that pull in echinoids [ sea urchins ] and other lustrelessness - grazing invertebrates , ” Danise writes .
The bones go through “ a well developed ‘ reef stage ’ " where oyster - same puppet colonize the ivory . Today such a level is rare , with os - eatingOsedax wormsconsuming the skeleton before this can occur . Osedax have not been identify before the recent Cretaceous , so may not have been around to play a similar role when this Ophthalmosaurus died . However , having only beendiscovered in 2002 , there is a plenty we do n’t know about the worm .
This is the first ichthyosaur to be studied in this way , but with some of the ancient reptiles get to 21 m farseeing , it is likely their burying ground represented an of import part of the sea ecology at the clip . The source note that in many pillow slip , it is hard to key the creatures responsible for special Deutsche Mark as a resolution of convergent evolution of generative behaviour among unrelated organisms that exploit like environs .
In summation to contemplate marine response to ichthyosaur and whales , Danise is studying the little - explore field of how deep sea ecosystems responded to major extinction events .
Nature Communications . minute groove suspected to be from clean fish .
Nature Communications , A close up of the marks left by ocean urchins on the ichthyosaur bones .
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