Summary:
The newly unearthed fossil's species has been dubbed "Thalattoarchon." The translation, "lizard eating predator of the sea,"is fairly accurate. This reptile wandered the ocean during the dinosaur era and ate other marine lizards of its own size, the first ocean predator to do so. The modern-day counterpart would be the orca and great white shark. In addition, the appearance of this species is only 8 million years after the largest mass extinction, which emphasizes the ability of ecosystems to recover from even the most extreme events. After 160 million years of success as a species, the Thalattoarchon went extinct from still unknown reasons.
Relevance to Class:
Fossils are of great importance to scientists, looking to understand evolutionary relationships. In the article, the fossil record, which identifies the relative age of fossils, shows that after a mass extinction, species returned to the ocean quickly. Some of the species surviving the mass extinction must have, through adaptive radiation, filled the empty niches. As we've studied, even though mass extinctions wipe out a huge percentage of species, leaving behind less variety, after the fact, species quickly diversify again.
This article also mentions some of the adaptations that the Thalattoarchon evolved. One adaptation was the long, sharp teeth that could cut up the large marine reptiles they ate. In combining Darwin's theory of natural selection and the biological definition of fitness, those that were able to catch and eat more prey would more likely survive and live to reproduce. This species was around for 160 million years before it became extinct, which is much longer than the average successful species' lifetime of 1-5 million years. The concept of extinction, though common sense to us today, was a radical idea in Darwin's time because people had long believed that species had been on Earth since God had created it and would continue to exist forever. Darwin's realization that species evolve also changed the opinions on extinction.
Works Cited:
URL: http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/19805
Author: Julie Kent
Date of Publication: January 8, 2013
Is this predator more similar to the whale or shark?
ReplyDeleteSince both sharks and reptiles (like the Thalattoarchon) are cold-blooded, while mammals like the whale are warm-blooded, the Thalattoarchon was probably more similar to a shark. (:
DeleteSince this ancient, extinct fish was discovered in Nevada, then there was clearly a large body of water originally where the western United States was. What was the name of the ancient body of water this sea creature lived in?
ReplyDeleteI can't seem to find what body of water was originally in Nevada, but considering that the article says the Thalattoarchon lived in an ocean, I would think that it lived in the Pacific Ocean. (:
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