Odd creature only marine reptile with a bill
IN shallow warm seas about 247 million years ago in what is now China, an oddball marine reptile with a duckbilled snout and unusually small eyes flourished in the aftermath of Earth’s worst mass extinction.
Scientists on Friday described fossils of the 1mlong Eretmorhipis carrolldongi, which had a head that looks too little for its body and unusually small eyes, indicating it relied on touch, not sight, to forage in murky water.
Previously known only from headless skeletons before new fossils were unearthed in Hubei province, E. carrolldongi appeared early in the Triassic Period in the wake of the mass extinction that erased roughly 90% of species at the end of the Permian Period.
Closely related to the ichthyosaurs, E. carrolldongi had four big flippers, triangular bony blades on its back and a stiff, bony body trunk.
‘‘A person seeing it would probably say ‘bizarre’ or ‘how weird’, said palaeontologist Ryosuke Motani, of the
University of California. ‘‘I think I said, ‘What?’ when I first saw it.’’
It probably foraged at dusk or night for soft invertebrates such as worms and shrimp, and is the oldest creature and only marine reptile known to have had a bill.
The research was published in Scientific Reports. — Reuters