As the magnitude of hundreds of millions of years is a difficult concept to grasp, the presence of a metaphor comes in handy.
An Indian research syndicate recently hit the paleontology jackpot of stirring discoveries, as the team announced last week the presence of a nearly untarnished and complete fossilized Ichthyosaur specimen. Fox News reports that a group of scientists began excavation of the subject earlier this year and after nearly 1500 hours of combined work at the site, the results were confirmed.
Ichthyosaur are thought to be the prevalent air breathing marine dinosaur of the mesozoic era, with a global population teeming in the warm and shallow seas of an earth dominated by a slowly fracturing supercontinent. A series of similar discoveries of the Ophthalmosauridae family have been unearthed in India, as well as Europe, though only partial fossils samples were recovered. The existence of a worldwide signature of the species, helps scientists to uncover how air breathing entities of the earlier geological era, employed efficient respiration methodologies for dealing with a lower oxygen content atmosphere.
The breathtaking biologic time capsule representing the pinnacle of dinosaur marine life was discovered in the Kutch district of Garajat, an area in Western India, bordering the Arabian Sea. Unlike the striking contrast of the heights of the Himalayan mountains as a testament to the extreme grueling and monumental terraforming properties of plate tectonics, the relative moderate hills of the region indicate a gradual rise of the sea floor when becoming a part of the Indian subcontinent.
While the overall size of the Ichthyosaur fossil was measured at a mere 5.5 meters in length (some giants of the species reached 9 meters!), it is a guarantee that the research team will not utilize an industrial sized loader to toss the ancient specimen back into the vaults of history.
Read the Fox News article here.