Paleontologists have found important clues to decipher the “monster graveyard” in Nevada – USA, where a series of giant ichthyosaurs came to die only 230 million years ago.
According to Sci-News and AP, a research team led by paleontologist Randy Irmis from the University of Utah (USA) has found some rare small bones among the huge piles of fossil bones at Berlin State Park- Ichthyosaur, which may help explain the “cemeterymonster”famous here.
This area has long been noted for revealing hundreds of ancient sea monster remains from the 1950s to the present. The oldest fossils date back up to 230 million years. They were all ichthyosaurs, or “fishing dragons” or “fish lizards,” an ancient marine reptile.
Monster dragons and their babies swim in the ancient sea – Photo: Gabriel Ugueto
Mysteriously, they gather to this location seemingly only to die. The site is now in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, located in the Shoshone Mountains of Midwestern Nevada, next to a long-abandoned mining town, giving it a spooky tinge.
But for scientists, the answer to this “death” land could be a big discovery that helps decipher the behavior of ancient mermaids.
This area was once a tropical sea and the small skeletons of young individuals, and also fossils identified as embryos, suggest this could very well be an ancient neonatal!
Pregnant ichthyosaurs sought out the waters – possibly peaceful and brooding in the Jurassic, Cretaceous periods – to give birth.
Surviving is always a difficult process for all animals. With the ancient ichthyosaurs, many children died in the process of giving birth. However, young bones and embryos are fragile fossils, so most of these finds are still bones of ill-fated mothers.
In the study, paleontologists also 3D modeled several fossils and identified sets of remains belonging to at least 37 different ichthyosaur species. They also claim that ancient monsters moved here in groups when giving birth.
According to co-author Nicholas Pyenson from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (USA), this habit of finding a common ‘baby house’ in the middle of the ocean, far from this foraging place, is also found in some species today. , for example whales.
To further confirm other theories for the deaths of these ancient monsters, they also examined minerals in the soil and did not detect any signs of volcanic eruptions or environmental changes. enough to cause mass death. They also died quite far from the ancient shores, so they did not die from a mass rush to shore.
