ANIMALS
Super-carnivorous ichthyosaur discovered
WORDS STEPHANIE PAPPAS
You wouldn’t want to meet an ichthyosaur while taking a dip in the early Cretaceous seas. That goes double for Kyhytysuka sachicarum: this newly identified, 130-million-year-old marine reptile is now known from fossils in central Colombia and had larger, more knife-like teeth than other ichthyosaur species – and that’s saying something, as ichthyosaurs are famous for their long, toothy snouts. These big teeth would have enabled K. sachicarum to attack large prey, such as fish and even other marine reptiles. “Whereas other ichthyosaurs had small, equally sized teeth for feeding on small prey, this new species modified its tooth sizes and spacing to build an arsenal of teeth for dispatching large prey,” said palaeontologist Hans Larsson of McGill University’s Redpath Museum in Montreal.