A marine reptile mass extinction 250 million years ago may have been followed by a "super evolution," suggests a toothless creature found by archaeologists in China, according to
London's Daily Mail.
Scientists believe research around the find, released on Monday in the journal Scientific Reports, shows how life quickly bounced back after a mass extinction killed roughly 96 percent of the life on Earth.
Archaeologists found a near complete fossil of a Sclerocormus parviceps in China, with a long whip-like tail and a small toothless skull that they believe lived 150 years ago, said the Daily Mail, and they believe the creature fed by sucking food through its syringe-like snout.
The Guardian in its reporting on the research said many ichthyosaurs had a long snout, teeth and a tail with big fins, which were not present in the new discovery.
"As its physiology is different to other marine reptiles previously discovered from the period, it indicates that evolution may have made a rapid burst to fill ecological niches left vacant by a catastrophic extinction event a few million years previous," said the Daily Mail.
"What it is telling us is that very soon after this massive extinction event (at the end of the Permian geologic period) there was a radiation and filling of all these vacant niches, and biodiversity of forms, that took place much, much quicker than we had previously imagined," said Nick Fraser of the National Museums Scotland and an author of the study, noted The Guardian.
The final word on the research goes to the
study's abstract:
"Contrary to the fast radiation of most metazoans after the end-Permian mass extinction, it is believed that early marine reptiles evolved slowly during the same time interval. However, emerging discoveries of Early Triassic marine reptiles are questioning this traditional view. Here we present an aberrant basal ichthyosauriform with a hitherto unknown body design that suggests a fast radiation of early marine reptiles."
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