A photo from open sources
The authors of a new study suggest that massive marine in ancient times, lizards could swim like sharks! In the end Cretaceous Mosasaurs – ocean predators, had the form skeletons resembling skeletons of lizards. However, their streamlined bodies and caudal fins had almost the same shape, like modern sharks. Study Co-author Johan Lindgren, a paleontologist at Lund University in Sweden, said: “Received in as a result of research, evidence suggests that these creatures evolved quite quickly to be able to easy to swim in the depths of the ocean. “More than 98 million years ago sea level was much higher than the present, so many shallow pools of the time, which today look like deep cracks and dips in the ground were habitats for mosasaurs (land lizards) adapted to land. Johan Lindgren sure that other lizards who managed to adapt to life in the depths ocean, gradually occupied the niche of higher predators who could grow to 15 meters in length and had an external resemblance to modern killer whales. Mosasaurs, like other dinosaurs, died out, about 65 million years ago. For several years lindgren not could provide evidence of his hypothesis that the early species the Mosasaurs had fins similar to sharks, since none of fossil skeletons did not contain imprints of soft tissue. Not less in 2008 Lindgren and his colleagues in bottom sediments in Jordan discovered a skeleton imprint of a young Mosasaur living about 70 million years ago, which were perfectly visible imprints of the dorsal and caudal fins resembling sharks tail, only upside down. “This sample is clearly demonstrates convergent evolution in action, “said Lindgren. (Convergent evolution occurs when organisms struggle to survival themselves is modulated by devices not characteristic of their kind). For example, giant lizards, to become effective swimmers, it was necessary to have a streamlined body and powerful fins. The study proves that the adapted giant lizards moved in the depths of the ocean just like that make modern sharks now. Sharks are the end product evolution, the development of which lasted about 32 million years. The most early versions of these sea creatures probably swam like eels, then about 88 million years ago they had flippers, and after another 20 million years of the industry, tail fins. Now at scientists have another important task – to find fossils the Mosasaurs that inhabited the Earth between 66 and 98 million years ago and see how fast they developed fins.
Translation by Sergey Vasilenkov
Sharks Monsters Evolution
