Jorge W. Moreno, Museum Paleontologi Villa de Leyva
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Artist renderings of Kyhytysuka sachicarum.
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Nationalgeographic.co.id—A team of paleontologists have identified a new species in Colombia, the ichthyosaur that lived in the according to Jurassic about 130 million years ago. They named it Kyhytysuka sachicarum.
Unlike other species that feed on small fish, this is a macro predator with its large skull and teeth, allowing it to hunt large fish and even reptiles. according to other. This study has been published in Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.
“We decided to call it Kyhytysuka, which translates as ‘one who cuts with something sharp’ in the native language of the central region of Colombia where the fossil was found, in honor of the ancient Muisca culture that existed there for thousands of years,” said one of the investigators, Dirley Cortés on page National Geographic España.
The name suited him like a glove, for the most striking difference from his close relatives was in his jaw, with teeth of different sizes and spaced apart from each other.
“This animal developed unique teeth that allowed it to eat large prey. While other ichthyosaurs had small teeth of the same size for eating small prey, this new species modified the size and spacing of its teeth to build an arsenal of teeth for hunting larger prey, such as large fish and other marine reptiles,” according to Hans Larsson, study co-author and director of the Redpath Museum of Natural History in Montreal.
Ichthyosaurs, whose appearance resembled dolphins, were a prehistoric order of reptiles among the many inhabitants of the Mesozoic seas. The Kyhytysuka fossil had originally been identified as a taxon of the genus Platypterygius, but according to the study authors “the many character differences and revised phylogenetic relationships allowed it to be recognized as a new genus.” The identification of this new genus has aroused great interest for two reasons.
The first is that, as has been said, Kyhytysuka is very different from its relatives and helps fill in the gaps in the evolutionary tree of this order.
Arguably, it is the missing link, enabling a general picture of the history and evolution of these marine reptiles to be formed.
Dirley Cortes
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Kyhytysuka jaw detail.
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Dirley Cortes
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Kyhytysuka skeleton reconstruction.
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Second and most importantly, according to his findings, it will help to better understand the evolution of marine ecosystems at the end of the Jurassic period, when there were major changes in fauna globally.
“Deep-sea ichthyosaurs, short-necked plesiosaurs, and sea-adapted crocodiles were replaced by a new lineage of long-necked plesiosaurs, turtles, large sea lizards called mosasaurs, and now these monstrous ichthyosaurs,” according to Dirley Cortés.
In fact, Kyhytysuka isn’t the only find in the area, where many new species are being discovered.
Also Read: Spicomellus afer, a New Species of Herbivorous Dinosaur from Morocco
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