Marine Reptiles

This is the skull of an Ichthyosaur or “Fish-lizard”. The back of its skull, seen from beneath, is to the right of the picture with the jaws pointing into the bottom-left corner.

Ichthyosaurs, and their relatives the plesiosaurs and mosasaurs, lived at the same time as the dinosaurs, 250-65 million years ago (in fact, ichthyosaurs went extinct around 20 million years before the dinosaurs).

Though they resembled dolphins, they were reptiles, not mammals. But like dolphins they would have had to come to the surface to breath, and would have given birth to live young.