Scientists Given A Peak Into The Evolutionary Period, Thanks To This Newly Discovered Species

A fossil from a newly discovered animal that didn't look like how it's supposed to has given scientists a peak into the evolutionary period after the mass extinction event that happened on Earth.

The new species called an ichthyosaur was named Sclerocormus parviceps, a marine reptile that dates back to the Lower Triassic, and it looked nothing like any other ichthyosaur scientists have studied.

According to Science Daily, ichthyosaurs were large group of marine reptiles that lived around the time of the earliest dinosaurs. Most of them looked similar to today's dolphins with streamlined bodies, long beak-like snouts, and powerful tail fins. However, the new species can be called a black sheep in the family. It has a short snout, its species name even means "small skull", and instead of a tail similar looking to a fish, it had a long whip-like tail without big fins at the end. And although most ichthyosaurs had conical teeth to catch their prey, Sclerocormus was toothless and used its short snout to create pressure and suck up food like a syringe.

Because of the differences from most of its relatives, scientists were able to draw something important about evolution. "Sclerocormus tells us that ichthyosauriforms evolved and diversified rapidly at the end of the Lower Triassic period," said study co-author Olivier Rieppel, of The Field Museum, in a statement. "We don't have many marine reptile fossils from this period," Rieppel added, "so this specimen is important because it suggests that there's diversity that hasn't been uncovered yet."

Rieppel also added that they think the biology museum curator will be able to find ways to help them better understand what life does when it needs to rebound. "We're in a mass extinction right now. Not one caused by volcanoes or meteorites but by humans," he said. "While the extinction 250 million years ago won't tell us how to solve what's going on today, it does bear on the evolutionary theory at work. How do we understand the recovery and rebuilding of a food chain, of an ecosystem? How does that get fixed, and what comes first?" Rieppel continued, Discovery News reported.

This study was done by scientists at Peking University, University of California, Davis, the Anhui Geological Museum, the Università degli Studi di Milano, The Field Museum, National Museums Scotland, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.