Cartorhynchus, the ichthyosaur apprentice.

2015-04-07 13:00:00

Almost two centuries ago, in 1821, the English paleontologists Henry de la Beche and William Conybeare published the first systematic description of ichthyosaurs, which they identified as marine reptiles. Since then, the position of these shark-like or dolphin-like reptiles on the evolutionary tree has been much disputed. On November 5, 2014, a team of paleontologists from China, the United States, and Italy published the description of a new species of reptile from the Lower Triassic that appears to fill a missing gap in the ichthyosaur evolutionary chain, the Cartorhynchus lenticarpus. whose name means “short snout and flexible wrist”.