Fossils From The Arctic Reveal Ocean-Dwelling Reptiles Of The Dinosaur Age

In a discovery that is helping scientists understand how life recovered after Earth’s most devastating extinction, researchers have found more than 30,000 fossils on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen, reported Daily Galaxy.

These fossils, which include teeth, bones, and remains of ancient marine reptiles, amphibians, bony fish, and sharks, come from a community that lived about 249 million years ago. The findings show how land-living animals quickly adapted to life in the ocean soon after extreme global warming and mass extinction at the dawn of the Age of Dinosaurs.

The fossils were first discovered in 2015, but it took scientists nearly a decade to excavate, clean, dissect, identify, and examine them in detail. The results of this research have now been released by a team of Scandinavian experts from the Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo and the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm.

The study was published in the journal Science. Spitsbergen, part of the Svalbard archipelago, is renowned for its fossils dating back to the early dinosaur era. These remains are found in rocks that were once a muddy seafloor near the vast Panthalassa Ocean. The most notable discoveries include bizarre marine reptiles and amphibians, representing the earliest stages of land creatures that later began living in the sea.

This evolutionary transition occurred gradually after the end-Permian extinction event, approximately 252 million years ago. In this event, known as the “Great Dying,” massive volcanic eruptions that occurred during the breakup of Pangaea led to the deoxygenation, acidification, and extreme heat in the oceans, wiping out over 90% of marine species.

For many years, scientists believed that it took about eight million years for marine life to recover, and that amphibians and reptiles gradually migrated to the deep seas. However, recent fossils found in Spitsbergen disprove this belief.

This fossil-rich layer forms a clearly visible bonebed on a hillside and was formed over a very short period of time. Stratigraphic studies show that it is approximately 249 million years old, just three million years after the mass extinction.

Researchers collected samples from a 36-square-meter area, recovering over 800 kilograms of material. This included scales from small fish, shark teeth, bones from large marine reptiles, and even fossilised feces.

These discoveries indicate that marine ecosystems regenerated much more rapidly than previously thought. By this early period, complex food chains had formed, and a variety of predatory reptiles and amphibians were active in the sea.

NOTE – This article was originally published in NDTV and can be viewed here