The discovery of a giant marine reptile skull in the United States has revealed new theories about the speed of evolution and how quickly the process can produce diversity.
The giant ichthyosaur fossil -- with a skull measuring almost two meters in length, an estimated body length of more than 17 meters and a weight of 45 tonnes - was found in Nevada. Ichthyosaurs are large extinct marine reptiles that dominated the sea more than 200 million years ago. Analysis of the skull of this particular ichthyosaur fossil has revealed a new species: Cymbospondylus youngorum.
"Schmitz worked with a team of international researchers to analyze the fossil, identify the ichthyosaur as a new species, create a phylogenetic tree -- a diagram which shows the evolutionary relationships among various biological species -- and then led a computational analysis comparing the speed and type of the evolution of body size in ichthyosaurs to that of whales.
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