Fossils from some of the largest creatures ever to swim Earth’s oceans—whale-sized marine reptiles called ichthyosaurs—have been found in a counterintuitive place: atop three mountains in the Swiss Alps up to 8,990 feet above sea level.
Scientists on Thursday described rib and vertebrae fossils from two ichthyosaur individuals: one about 69 feet long and the other about 49 feet. They described from a third individual the largest-known tooth from any ichthyosaur with a base 2.4 inches wide and an estimated length of 6 inches, suggestive of a fearsome predator.
The fossils, dating to around 205 million years ago near the end of the Triassic Period, make these three individuals among the largest of the giant ichthyosaurs that inhabited the oceans at a time when dinosaurs were beginning to dominate the land.
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