During the dinosaur age, ichthyosaurs — large marine reptiles that look like dolphins — flourished in prehistoric oceans, living in all kinds of watery environments near and far from shore. But as ...

Long-extinct "fish lizards" first appeared in the ocean about 250 million years ago, and their fossils were found high in the Swiss Alps. According to a study published Thursday in the Journal of ...

The massive jawbone of a 205-million-year-old ichthyosaur has been discovered in southwestern England, making it "one of the largest animals to ever live" — it was nearly the size of a blue whale. The ...

Marine reptiles that cruised the planet's oceans millions of years ago may have suffered from their own version of the bends, studies of their fossils suggest. But scientists are in disagreement over ...

The ichthyosaurs of Holzmaden, Germany, are among the most exquisite fossils ever discovered. Many of their skeletons have been left in stunning, articulated detail, and the very outlines of their ...

From seals to whales, many marine animals have a thick layer of fat directly under their skin, known as blubber. Now, a new study has shown for the first time that ichthyosaurs – ancient marine ...

For 150 million years during the age of the dinosaurs, a group of dolphin-like reptiles called ichthyosaurs ruled the ocean – until everything started to go wrong. After multiplying into about 100 ...

Ichthyosaurs represent a diverse clade of Mesozoic marine reptiles that rapidly adapted to fully aquatic lifestyles following the end-Permian mass extinction. Their streamlined, 'fish-like' body plan, ...

An extraordinary fossil has blown the socks of palaeontologists as it was found to contain the soft tissues of a Temnodontosaurus ichthyosaur, marking the first time we’ve ever found soft tissue ...

Using computer simulations and 3D models, palaeontologists from the University of Bristol have uncovered more detail on how Mesozoic sea dragons swam. The research, published today in the journal ...

Ichthyosaurs may have been able to hide their approach from their prey. A newly studied fossil reveals that Temnodontosaurus’s flippers had unique adaptations to reduce noise underwater not seen ...

The prehistoric world was intensely violent. So I believed when I was a kid, anyway. Almost every book I read or movie I saw about now-fossilized creatures showed them as ferocious monsters that were ...