Prehistoric Marine Animals List

The ichthyosaurs were marine predators that looked like modern dolphins and could reach a massive size during the Triassic period over 200 million years ago.

Prehistoric marine animals list. Top Ten Marine Predators. Genus Cartictops Ding. Top 10 Terrifying Prehistoric Sea Monsters.

One thing that separates Plesiosaur from the other prehistoric marine reptiles is how it reproduced. Top 10 Prehistoric Sea Creatures Tylosaurus. Shastasaurus the largest marine reptile species ever found was a variety of ichthyosaur.

Marine biologists didnt know that fishermen off the coast of Africa had been occasionally catching them for years. It appeared in the oceans of the world about 360 million years ago during the Upper Devonian period and died out almost at the same time as the dinosaurs pterosaurs and marine reptiles at the end of the Cretaceous period. Its hard to keep the idea of a shark the size of a school bus out of pop culture.

Hyaenodon is a genus of large carnivorous mammals that lived from the Eocene to the mid Miocene epochs. The Ichthyostega was an amphibian that from its appearance especially its head and tail looked exactly like a fish. Its hard to keep the idea of a shark the size of a school bus out of pop culture.

A small oily fish of the Atlantic and Pacific providing food for many fish marine mammals and birds. From what paleontologists can decipher of this reptiles remains the Tanystropheus appears to have been a prehistoric reptile version of a giraffe with shorter legs a long neck that juts out rather than up and a massive tail. Genus Paranictops Qiu 1977.

But at 60 or so tons the middle Eocene Basilosaurus was certainly the biggest prehistoric whale that ever lived outweighing even the much later Leviathan which itself may have tangled with the biggest prehistoric shark of all time Megalodon by 10 or 20 tons. Megalodon didnt earn its nickname Big Tooth for nothing. Plus science-minded entertainment sources like the Discovery Channel love creatures that.