It’s ridiculous in hindsight exactly how badly ichthyosaurs have been shafted in paleontology when it comes to their success as apex predators (to the point there are entire hypothesized evolutionary events that rely on this false assumption, like the supposed Toarcian Turnover, which assumes raptorial marine apex predators were only a thing once rhomaleosaurids came along and that all ichthyosaurs were small-prey specialists). This misunderstanding still lives on in media and in pop culture, unfortunately.
There's also the issue that most people know about Ichthyosaurs because of Icthyosaurus, which looks like and probably ate the same stuff as a dolphin, so there is an unconscious perception of "Ichthyosaur=Dolphin" already set there.
@@thenumbah1birdman Yeah it’s like Phosphorosaurus being the popular image of what mosasaurs were like and everyone assuming all mosasaurs were (relatively) tiny small-prey specialists.
@@thenumbah1birdman I would say that probably for most people, either _Stenopterygius_ or _Opthalmosaurus_ are what they think of when they think of ichthyosaurs. My impression is that _Ichthyosaurus_ itself is actually relatively obscure. Either way, non-thunnosaurian ichthyosaurs seem to have never really made it into the public perception of ichthyosaurs. Which seems blatantly unfair considering how conversely, the only pliosaurs in the public perception seem to be macro-raptorial forms like _Pliosaurus_, _Liopleurodon_ or _Kronosaurus_ (and the various genera commonly subsumed under that moniker), while almost nobody ever talks about the many Pliosaurs that were piscivorous, like _Peloneustes_ and the majority of more basal forms, but even thalassophoneans like _Luskhan_. Somehow there’s this biased view that pliosaurs and mosasaurs were all apex predators, while ichthyosaurs were not, something that, once ingrained in the public consciousness, is hard to get rid of, no matter how many obscure, giant, macrophagous ichthyosaurs get found.
over-sized dolphins, over-sized (white?) sharks, over-size (killer?) whales.. ... eitherway, would be cool, if those 3 predators lived at the same time and had a "rock, paper & scissors" relationship.., occasionally fighting each other..
✔️ Yeah, and I've actually seen cave drawings of these dino-fish. You see, my great, great, great , great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great(x 10,000) grandfather was an avid Jurassic era fisherman, who caught one of these things while surf fishing for megalodons. He was using monofilament line made of 50,000lb test stegosaurus sinew, attached to a lure with a hook made of a brontosaurus rib, with a spinner spoon made of a giant abalone shell. The cave he lived in has been passed down through millions of my family's generations, so I'm able to look at his cave drawings. Unfortunately, he seems to have exaggerated the size of the fish he caught. He claimed it was 150 feet long and 200 tons in weight, when we know it was actually only 1/3 that size!
This is just proof to me that Ichthyosaurs have been getting the Edmontosaurus treatment in paleo media for a super long time (i.e insinuation that they're nothing but helpless prey items.) and that they are infinitely more terrifying than Hollywood ever gives them credit for.
Frankly I’d argue they had it much worse than hadrosaurs. Most hadrosaurs (with one or two exceptions) and other ornithopods were still viable prey or large predators, just not easy prey (in the same way Buffalo and zebra can put up a serious fight against lions). Ichthyosaurs on the other hand weren’t even the prey but rather the predators in a number of cases.
we need a new baseline for what older animals were tbh. most of them were much scarier and bigger then hollywood depicts them as. these animals were not peaceful at all. they were all ferocious predators. capable of hunting t rex / megalodon with ease.
Thank you for doing the ichthyosaurs a little bit of the justice they deserve, i can't believe people are still hyperfocused on the big shark when these guys were around.
Lmfao probably because the big shark is the largest predator class to ever live, and sharks are more popular in general. Do you actually think a Megalodon wouldn’t THRASH an Icthyosaurid? It has the strongest bite ever measured at 48,000 psi, at largest it can be 3/4 the size of an arctic blue whale, and was partially related to one of the most feared sharks alive, the Great white🤷🏿♂️
I just want to say, your presentation, regular citation and critical engagement with academic work sets your work on youtube above the rest. I appreciate how you explore these papers with the math and physiology involved. I'm an undergrad chasing their dream of working in paleontology, and this work you're doing is extremely helpful in putting names on my radar and introducing me to methodology I'm just not getting in my main biology courses (yet). I intend to specifically email several of the cited workers here after I read their papers myself. Thank you so much, and I'm so excited to see what you put together in the future!
Thank you so much! I'm on a very similar path (finishing my undergrad and looking into paleontology programs), and something I can't recommend enough is the Paleo Portal webinar program run by Brian Curtice. Brian brings in paleontologist guest speakers twice a month into zoom meetings to present research and network with the students. It's $10 a month, but it is absolutely worth it!
@@francissemyon7971 Actually that was something that Apexzious discovered via his own contacts with researchers and private collectors. But Paleo Portal is a fantastic networking tool as well!
@@TheVividen Good to know and extremely intriguing. What could outclass in firepower an old female O. megalodon ? Latest upper estimate in the recent literature using summed crown width is a Chilean tooth in Shimada (2022) suggesting a 19.9-21.7 m fish with the corresponding killing apparatus...
Yea ive been looking and no info published. Hyped but Im loseing faith in this so called "hyperpredator". With that said can't wait hope it lives up to the hype.
@@carlsjoberg7110 Yeah… about that. Have you heard of the “yellowstone hyperpredator”? I believe it’s what he was referring to. It’s supposed to be this gargantuan toothed whale from the late Oligocene that is supposedly the largest macropredator by far. It’s obscure, and hasn’t been named yet, and was allegedly going to be described this month, but I doubt that’ll happen, so we’ll have to wait and see.
Great video! Thank you for your in-depth analysis and knowledge, I can tell you're very passionate about paleontology. Looking forward to your next video about the Largest Macropredator!
I swear, the more we learn about Ichthyosaurs the more it seems, they evolved to test every body style way back then. It's sad that they get passed over as "just prey" when obviously they fought for their right at the top.
I slight detour but I wonder if the mosasaurs hadn’t been wiped out would they have become more shark like/ whale like and would they have gotten bigger?
Good video. For a long time even I myself viewed ichthyosaurs as "lesser" marine predators compared to pliosaurs and mosasaurs. The giant triassic ichthyosaurs were assumed to live like modern sperm whales and beaked whales, diving deep to feed on squid. It's now clear that ichthyosaurs were the first large tetrapod superpredators, and very scary ones at that.
Really nice video. Only thing I'd say is regarding ramming: as the excerpts note, the study found different pathology distributions across ichthyosaurs over time. It's the post-Triassic, thunniform ichthyosaurs that commonly had injuries on their ribs, which suggests ramming (and body slamming and tail slapping, like modern odontocetes). Triassic ichthyosaurs had injuries more commonly distributed on their hindlimbs and tail, and with their anguilliform swimming mode, they were probably less likely to employ or survive ramming. Anguilliform swimming relies on flexion of the torso, and if your ribs are broken, this becomes debilitating (although, crocodiles, which are anguilliform swimmers, will strike each other with their heads in combat). Triassic ichthyosaurs DO have bite traces, so they definitely bit each other. Also, their anguilliform swimming meant that their whole bodies were a lot more flexible than those of thunniform swimmers, granting them superior maneuverability and agility. Coupled with the fact that even early ichthyosaurs had elevated metabolisms, a Shonisaurus, Himalayasaurus, or Swiss Tyrant would be more agile swimmers for their size than something like Livyatan or megalodon.
Good catch. Yes, Triassic ichthyosaurs would likely not have done ramming nearly as much, but since it was more Late Triassic rather than a more basal form, I thought perhaps it may be slightly more applicable in this instance. I think the anguilliform swimming means they had better agility/turn radius than many animals. Livyatan as a marine mammal was endothermic with a high metabolism and O. megalodon had a body temperature intermediate to great whites/regional endotherms and true endotherms like modern cetaceans, so the difference in metabolism may not be so significant but definitely a boost for the ichthyosaurs when it comes to speed and activeness in general.
@@Apexzious Yeah, megalodon and Livyatan (obviously Livyatan) certainly had elevated metabolisms too, I just brought it up for Triassic ichthyosaurs just to make clear that they probably were on even footing with regionally endothermic sharks and cetaceans in activity. For what it's worth, Temnodontosaurus was more fish-like than the rest mentioned in this video, and Kyhytysuka (one of the last ichthyosaur genera, which happened to be macropredatory) certainly would've been too, so I think odontocete-like ramming, body slamming, and tail slapping was fully possible for them.
@@toothclaw6985 anguilliforms? probably not, shastasaurids alredy had rotund torsos and forked tails, so they had definetly alredy evolved more advanced methods of swimming like subcarangiform or carangiform
The first mistake was putting Megalodon and Livyatan in the same sentence as they aren’t similar by any means save for size. Megalodon on average was obviously much faster and more maneuverable than the sperm whale predecessor, though I’m not sure of the other animal since I’m commenting before watching the video. I’m just saying the Livyatan and Megalodon comparison is quite tiring as they didn’t even sit at the same levels in their respective food chains, seeing as Megalodon sat 2 whole trophic levels above it, and they solemnly ever actually competed for food to begin with. The shark ate much more, and much larger prey, as a hypervorous, cannibalistic shark that may or may not have snacked on its siblings before birth. The Icthyosuarid wouldn’t be holding a candle to the shark, and rest assured! Being that it was between 50-100 tons of pure muscle, teeth, and the strongest bite of anything to ever breath.
I'd be careful with biteforce estimated. Estimating biteforce from mechanics, without taking into account muscle attachment points or body morphology otherwise can yield outlandish figures. Even just a basic examination of ichtiosaur skulls reveals a profound lack of attachment points for large mandibular muscles - something that is a uniting factor among all heavy biting animals to have ever lived. In fact other traits, like the small, sharp teeth and the long snout all suggest predation of fishes. Sure, you can call it "macropredatory", but then again, I don't see why anyone would have thought that a 20 meter marine reptile could survive without eating large fish. On the other hand, the skull is unequipped to take out animals of similar sizes. The idea that you can measure bite force at the BASE of the skull not only doesn't take into account musculature, as I stated before - it also makes it blatantly clear that the author hasn't thought for longer than a second about the statement. How would large bodied prey get to the absolute base of the skull? All hard biting long snouted animals - dogs, bears, crocodiles, tyrannosaurids, you name it - have a profoundly powerful front bite as well - because you can't expect to use the base of the jaws to do all the work. This is like suggesting you can bite someone with your molars.
@@wokencs330 Considering both of those animals lived tens of millions of years later, yeah, sure. The dolphin analogy os actually pretty close, if you compare the mandible of a modern day sperm whale to a large Ichtiosaur, you'll see many similarities.
Actually, of the hard-biting animals you mentioned, only tyrannosaurs (and big cats, which you didn’t mention) have adaptations for powerful bite at the front of the jaws; all the others have a much weaker bite at the front of the jaws than at the base of the jaws, even crocodilians. Canids in particular not only have a weaker bite at the front but also consistently have weaker jaws and teeth compared to similarly-sized pantherine cats (instead having more laterally compressed canines for slashing at prey). This doesn’t even get into the fact that you don’t necessarily need bite force to kill large prey efficiently, because bite force is only a small part of what makes a bite dangerous. Gape, sharpness of teeth, and forces produced by other parts of the predator’s anatomy (such as for force of it swimming into its prey, or in land animals the pushing and pulling forces behind the teeth generated by the neck) all play important roles as well. And did you literally ignore what the video pointed about many ichthyosaurs NOT having small conical teeth but much larger teeth specialized for macropredation, and with bladed edges in many cases? Or that some of them DIDN’T have long, narrow snouts? You’re now straight-up lying to argue that literally every ichthyosaur ever was only capable of eating animals much smaller than itself.
@@bkjeong4302 *AKCHUALLY!!!* I never said dogs, or bears, or even tyrannosaurs have identical bites at the base of their jaws as at the snout. That's nonsense, due to the leverages of the skull the front will always bite weaker. So maybe stop putting words in my mouth. Maybe if you actually read what I wrote, you're have seen that I specifically wrote "long snouted", because obviously it's worthless to compare a f_cking shonisaurus skull to a cat skull or mustelid skull in terms of biomechanics. What I WAS talking about, though, which you ignored, is ADAPTATIONS for strong bites. For instance - a slightly tilted jaw angle both in canids, bears, AND many carnivorous dinosaurs serves to bring the plane of biting BACK, closer to the masticator muscles. This, again, increases leverages in the front, as well as in the back. Ichtiosaurids typically have no such adaptation. On another note, the muscle attachment points on the skulls of mammal predators, as well as tyrannosauids, are as close to the snout as possible without sacrificing mobility - again, to increase bite force across the skull. Meanwhile the skull of ichtiosaurs is almost triangular, with muscle attachment points being in the very back of the skull. Then there's heterodontism. Both the aforementioned mammals, AND large bodies apex predator dinosaurs like tyrannosaurus, OR even crocodilians, show some level of heterodonty, with the front teeth in the skull being more adept at holding onto prey - longer, pointier, to penetrate deeply into the prey, and hold into it. Do you see this in ichtiosaurs? No. They had no such adaptation to hold onto prey - so they had their MASSIVE 1 inch teeth, coupled with their weak a__ bite force. That's not gonna hold a pliosaurus. "You don't need bite force to kill large prey efficiently" Well, you can always use bow and arrows, but I doubt ichtiosaurs had opposable thumbs. Here's the thing though. You can make the argument that ichtiosaurs hunted large prey WITH weak bite force - and of course, you'd have to find some evidence to back that up -, BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT THIS VIDEO PRESENTS. It talks about bite force specifically as evidence of "macropredatory" behaviour (disingenuously insinuating that the "macro" refers to the size of the PREY, when in fact it refers to the PREDATOR). So don't bring up other methods of predation to account for a weak bite force, unless you concede that ichtiosaurs had the bite force of a giant pair of grill tongs. As for the teeth... instead of listening to the video, maybe you can, you know... look at what those teeth actually looked like. I did. You didn't. Because I prefer evidence, you're just a "dino fan" who doesn't give two sh_ts about reality - you just want your 5 minutes of trivia to tell your mom. You're obviously a hostile little b_tch because your favourite fat scaly dolphins were insulted with the truth. Again, you don't even know what the f_ck macropredatory means. You just lapped up the slop thrown to you by the creator of this biased video. Maybe instead of trying to nitpick my arguments, just find a f_cking therapist, and tell them that meanies insulted your tub-a-lard lizard online. Because newsflash: ichtiosaurs were never EVER apex predators. And you can take that to the f_cking bank.
"It's crazy that the three largest marine predators are a fish, a reptile, and a Mammal." - no, the 3 largest are all mammals; blue whale, fin whale and sperm whale - and I'll save you your next reply and my response; yes, they are predators. They kill and consume other organisms, that's predation
Hello Vividen, this was a wonderful breakdown but I had a question. At 10:00 you mentioned that Tyrannosaurus had a maximum bite force of under 50K newtons, but when searching for this paper all I can find are estimates of 57,000 newtons or more with only one being 35,000 in a paper regarding juveniles. Would you say this new estimate is more accurate than the prior ones due to recency?
wow... a marine predator larger than megalodon! can't wait for paleontologists to suddenly declare that megalodon was 100 feet long with teeth the size of spear, and weighed over 1000 tons
no surprise really if you followed prehistoric news for years..its well known they could potentially get larger than the collected specimens as many experts hypothesized years ago....
I learned about ichthyosaurs through a documentary long, long ago (which on a fairly recent rewatch made me tear up from an ichthyosaur scene), and I thought they were incredible creatures and wished they were still around Then, as the years went on, I didn't hear much around them Aside from the fact that out of the 3 big marine reptile groups, they died out first, making my love for them slightly dwindle But this video has reignited that love, and I am so grateful for it! Ichthyosaurs rule once again!
This is very impressive, informative, and accurate. I especially like how you don't exaggerate anything. My favorite part of this is the predatory whale _Livyatan melvillei_ , and the giant shark _Otodus_ (formerly _Carcharodon_ ) _megalodon_ , of the Neogene period. I didn't know, until I saw this presentation of yours, that _Livyatan_ could grow to be 15.11 meters (49 feet 6⅞ inches) long and 50,770 kilograms (111,964.6875 pounds) in mass, with teeth up to 18.1 centimeters (7⅛ inches) long above the gum line and 9 centimeters (3½ inches) thick, and the _O. megalodon_ could reach 15.93 meters (52 feet 3⅛ inches) in length and 61,560 kilograms (135,716⅝ pounds) in mass, with a dorsal fin 1,715 millimeters (5 feet 7½ inches) high and teeth 111.2 millimeters (4⅜ inches) long above the gum line. I also didn't know that present-day sperm whales are less bulky for their length than _Livyatan_ was for its length, and that _Otodus_ rather than _Carcharodon_ is the giant shark's valid genus name. I thank you for sharing this excellent work of yours.
First video of yours I've come across and I am loving it! Less watered down than your average paleo channels for sure and something more akin to a scientific paper but the script and your editing helps bring it together. Good shit and looking forward to the next one. Gonna check out the backlog as well. Cheers!
How would you think shonisaurus hunted its prey? It’s jaws are slender but had robust teeth. How would it tackle large prey? By crushing them or tearing flesh? I think they had a strong posterior bite force and swallowed some of the prey items whole
It didn't have "robust teeth". The video said deep seated, which is true of all teeth. The size and shape of the teeth is consistent with other piscivorous animals. It ate fish. End of f_cking story. It ate fish like gharials do today.
I clicked on this video thinking that the reptile on the thumbnail that is in color, is to scale with the other silhouettes. That would've been a multiple of blue whales.
So, what actually is the name of this ichthyosaur species? I’m trying to learn more about it, but it’s a bit hard to do so when you don’t know what it’s called. 😅
It doesn't have an official name yet, so we're calling it the Swiss Tyrant for now. Martin Sander said it represented an unknown species, and it has yet to be fully described and named.
A video about predatory ichthyosaurs feels somewhat incomplete without including the Thalattoarchon saurophagis. Excellent work, regardless. Eagerly looking forward to more amazing videos in the future. Good luck. 👍
Excellent overview :). One slight comment: the ichthyosaur material in the Besanosaurus holotype are definitely a fetus and not ingested material. Paper on this topic is in the works. Authors on the 2020 Guizhou paper didn’t really do their homework unfortunately. Besanosaurus is therefore likely out as macropredator given the extreme slender snout and minimal gape.
so the ichthyosaurs just peaked at their begginig, huh? They produced gargantuan forms like shonisaurus, combospondylus youngorum, the Swiss tyrant (possibly a species of himalayasaurus), Lilstock monster and Aust collosus, all at the very beggining of their reign, didn't they? The biggest ichthyosaur of the Jurassic was a measly 10 meter long Temnodontosaurus and in Creetaceus a simiraly sized Longirostria. While the pliosaurs peaked in the Cretaceus, milions of years after they've appeared, and Mosasaurs peaked at the very end of their existence.
Not really. The big ichthyosaurs quickly became outcompeted or died off. That happens a lot to large predatory animals, since they are most vulnerable to sudden climate change. When their prey becomes smaller or dies off, so do they. Ichthyosaurs held onto late into the cretaceous.
Indeed tomas this can be explained from the fact that when the icthyosaurs first appeared, the sea was still recovering from the worst mass extinction of all time, the great dying, therefore, they faced little to no competition and so easily managed to dominate, peaking at their very begginings The plesiosaurs originated in the late triassic, and so, they had to live in an ocean that was alredy crowded and were prey to the giant icthyosaurs like shoni and swiss tyrant When the End triassic mass extinction happened, a lot of icthyosaurs died out, barely re-estabilishing themselves as top predators, but then the toarcian extinction killed off those predatory icthyosaurs, allowing the plesiosaurs to finally take their place and dominate, spreading into a wide variety of shapes and sizes and becoming top predators themselves, wich is why they peaked in the early cretaceaous, with predatory forms like kronosaurus and sachicasaurus mosasaurs had the same story as plesiosaurs, they started out in a sea that was alredy crowded with plesiosaurs and small icthyosaurs, it was only when a series of sudden climate change killed off the icthyosaurs and pliosaurs that mosasaurs could take their place as new dominant predators, wich is why they peaked right at the end of their reign
All these Rex and Megalodon fanboys in the comments, get a new favorite, yours is getting old and boring, you don't have to defend them all the time, they are overused and overrated already, no need to get hostile to protect your only love, I'm glad I ain't as dull as you lot, only having one overused favorite, while I have more than 100.
Perhaps part of the problem might be that palaeontologists consider most ichthyosaurs to be fish eaters- that is, eaters of marine organisms the size of modern mackerel or cod. They kind of forget that the largest bony fish ever was swimming about at roughly the same time, Leedsicthys ... and that there must have been bigger fish than mackerel about to eat, too. Also, what out there is going to eat all those sharks as well?
Yes, Berlin ichthyosaur state park. The largest known ichthyosaurs for a long time, until larger ones were described in the early 2000s. And yes, considerably larger than _Liopleurodon_ _Liopleurodon_ was about the size of a large great white shark or small orca, not in the same league as the largest ichthyosaurs or even many larger pliosaurs.
What is with youtubers insisting on using background music, to then not level it at all? It's video editing 101 but it seems to be too advanced for 90% of youtube.
I think paleontologists are a bit childish. They like dreaming about huge monsters as big as King Kong and Godzilla. As far as we know for sure ( I mean with evidence, not speculations ) the blue whale is still the biggest animal which ever existed, and Shonisaurus is still the biggest Ictyosaurus
Huh, Is this some new discovery I haven't heard of? The last one was with Sarabosaurus and Abingdon pliosaur, but this and that is not an ichthyosaur, and Sarabo is not mega big either. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to this film to watch it and find out what it hides:))
@@PrinceIkossie That's another new upcoming predatory animal on August 2nd, 2023 published by paleontologists. Everyone will be talking about it, but there is something up our sleeves if you've seen the post credit scene in the vid.
I have always been intrigued by the bony eye plates of ichthyosaur fossils. Between the protection and apparently very large eyes, do these imply they may have dived very deep?
Yes, at least some of them were able to. Larger eyes are needed for lower light conditions, so ichthyosaurs with proportionally larger eyes would be able to dive quite deep. Bony scutes would help to resist the high pressures at such depths.
what makes me curious the most is that throughout history, probably since the first large-scale emergence of secondary-aquatic species (idk the correct english term, the species that evolved from prior land ones) we had an ecological niche of a marine macro-predator, either as the apex branch of those secondary-aquatic ones, or, as a Meg, a hunter on those (I think it's been established, that the Meg was a citation hunting specialist), however, sinse the megalodon died out about 4m years ago we had this ecological "throne" empty, sperm whales being the clostst, but choosing the highly specialized lifestyle. Where is the new monster? It couldn't be us the factor that have prevented it's emergence, could it? Or has it simply not been enough time since the meg?
This was surprisingly easy to listen to, you've done a great job! It would be cool if we saw a itchyosaur coming in and demolishing a megalodon in the next Jurassic World sequel.
Yes, but there were eight sperm whales in 500 000 measured individuals that were supposedly bigger than the commonly accepted maximum of 20.7 m, and their reliability has been questioned. I am not saying they couldn’t have been that big, but their relevance is essentially zero.
@@Ornitholestes1 "500 000 measured individuals" Most of them defenseless cow packs. Bulls could relatively easily evade whaling by diving down. The bull that sunk the Essex, probably the largest officially recorded specimen, was only got caught because he tried to defend a pack of cows.
@@nickkorkodylas5005 Maybe, although in the whaling data that I know, there are actually four times as many males as females. Might be a result of a biased sample, but it is interesting that this seems to occur across several different datasets (Matthews 1938, Fujino 1959, Clarke and Paliza 1972, Nakamura et al. 2013) This is only a sample of 323 whales, but of these 256 are males. A strong bias against large bulls would also run counter to the very selective pressure thought to be responsible for giant bull specimens being rarer nowadays than they used to be. If giant bulls were so much more rarely taken by whalers as compared to smaller specimens, rather than selectively targeted due to their size, then why did Sperm whale bulls get smaller, rather than larger, in response to whaling? You would expect sperm whale size to increase if smaller specimens were more heavily selected against by whaling. But given that you are right, and McClain et al.’s data are heavily biased towards females (they unfortunately are pretty tight about giving useful information on their sperm whale sample), that still means we are probably talking about the largest eight (debatable) specimens in a sample of at least a few hundreds of thousands, a truly negligible fraction. Even if all of them were really reliably measured, that would still mean they make up at most in the region of 0.00001 % of the male population. As for the Essex sperm whale, I don’t recall that specimen ever being killed and reliably measured, or was it? Surely a guesstimate by a terrified sailor isn’t what one would consider an "officially recorded" measurement. ---refs: Clarke, R. and Paliza, O. 1972. Sperm whales of the Southeast Pacific. Part III: Morphometry. Hvalrådet Skrifter 53: 1-106. Fujino, K. 1956. On the body proportions of the sperm whales (Physeter catodon). Scientific Reports of The Whales Research Institute Tokyo, Japan 11 (47-83). Matthews, L.H. 1938. The sperm whale, Physeter catodon. Discovery Reports 17: 93-168. Nakamura, G., Zenitani, R. and Kato, H. 2013. Relative skull growth of the sperm whale, Physeter macrocephalus, with a note of sexual dimorphism. Mammal study 38 (3): 177-186.
yea your right,i recal reading the size chart ,and also current blue whales are around 75ft with 100ft being very rare....all due to near depletion most of the last centuries...right whales also used to reach up to 80ft back in the 1900s but now they are closer to 60ft...
Thank god the oceans oxygen levels are much lower culling giant feeders like this due to inability to support the needs for their prey and themselves. One day, they came to the surface to breathe and never went back down until they starved to death and their carcasses sank into the abyss.
Heeey, checked out a few of your videos and I'm now subscribed. I'm a big fan of your longer form video with cited sources and purposeful imagery. Keep up the great work sir!
All largest needs to have asterisks of "so far" in addition to the blue whale sized ichthyosaur a balasosauir, aka early snake whale might have been even bigger then a blue whale. Thoughout childhood I was told Paraceratherium was the biggest mamal ever, and turns out is number 2 vs a prehistoric elephant of the past.
but the potential is there for huge specimens to reach such sized...i wouldn't be surprised when more whale size specimens are found ...most blue whales currently on average reach around 70-75ft...100ft are very rare currently...
@@andrewdrednaught I kinda guessed, but I saw a thread of someone claiming a size of 26m and 165 tonnes (on this video, in case you're interested) and that it'd be released next July or something. If you want you can check it, but yh, that probably messed up my response.
@@TheVividen I'm binge watching your videos right now while painting as I have just discovered your channel earlier. Amazing paleocontent man keep it up :) on your vocal chord vid😎
These animals are small. Genuinely small. The largest apex predators are actually The giant pacific octopus with a tentacle length of 12000 kilometers long, and a head span across being 6000 kilometers across. There is also Leviathan who is a stunning 14,450 kilometers long, Much larger than megalodon, who although large was niot as large as the aforementioned creatures. The animals here were food for these monstrous animals. That whale I found its tail it measure over 900kilometers across. its body was destroyed by time but the tail and spinal structure is still visible today.
For someone stumbling upon this, it's a confusing onslaught of data, but on the other hand, it's way more professional than all those pseudo documentaries that just say "that's it, this is hoe it was". What shocks me (which it shouldn't, it's obvious in hindsight) is the amount of pure speculation from one speculated variable to another. If we ever discovered one of them way smaller/lighter, suddenly everything shifts. What would be interesting to me, are a crocodile, a tuna, a shark and a whale of comparable sizes also in comparable mass classes? I would highly doubt that, so how was the first mass prediction even made? Tbh, how do we even know the mass of a sperm whale?
This is exactly the kind of paleontology material that I have been missing in my life. I really appreciate it how you dig into the data, the quotes and citations and discussion of the available evidence. Gives me joy 💙 Speaking as someone who ended up in the humanities it is also really interesting to see the different interpretations at work. Really great stuff, thank you!
Imagine all the critters that never fossilized and we just can't definitively know about because any evidence of their existence is long, long since cycled thru the Earth's geological goings on, or they're just so deep in the Earth we can't access them.
She sell sea shell on the sea shore. Icthyosaurs where amazing and one of the reasons I first became interested in paleontology. I wonder how Mary Anning would react to how much we have learned since she first started digging on the beach.
![Beyond the Observable Universe [4K]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/mty0srmLhTk/mqdefault.jpg)
It’s ridiculous in hindsight exactly how badly ichthyosaurs have been shafted in paleontology when it comes to their success as apex predators (to the point there are entire hypothesized evolutionary events that rely on this false assumption, like the supposed Toarcian Turnover, which assumes raptorial marine apex predators were only a thing once rhomaleosaurids came along and that all ichthyosaurs were small-prey specialists). This misunderstanding still lives on in media and in pop culture, unfortunately.
There's also the issue that most people know about Ichthyosaurs because of Icthyosaurus, which looks like and probably ate the same stuff as a dolphin, so there is an unconscious perception of "Ichthyosaur=Dolphin" already set there.
@@thenumbah1birdman
Yeah it’s like Phosphorosaurus being the popular image of what mosasaurs were like and everyone assuming all mosasaurs were (relatively) tiny small-prey specialists.
itchthyosaurs looks more like sharks/fish
@@thenumbah1birdman I would say that probably for most people, either _Stenopterygius_ or _Opthalmosaurus_ are what they think of when they think of ichthyosaurs. My impression is that _Ichthyosaurus_ itself is actually relatively obscure. Either way, non-thunnosaurian ichthyosaurs seem to have never really made it into the public perception of ichthyosaurs.
Which seems blatantly unfair considering how conversely, the only pliosaurs in the public perception seem to be macro-raptorial forms like _Pliosaurus_, _Liopleurodon_ or _Kronosaurus_ (and the various genera commonly subsumed under that moniker), while almost nobody ever talks about the many Pliosaurs that were piscivorous, like _Peloneustes_ and the majority of more basal forms, but even thalassophoneans like _Luskhan_.
Somehow there’s this biased view that pliosaurs and mosasaurs were all apex predators, while ichthyosaurs were not, something that, once ingrained in the public consciousness, is hard to get rid of, no matter how many obscure, giant, macrophagous ichthyosaurs get found.
How do you define public and media? I'm certain most people havr absolutly no idea what ichtyosaurs even are.
So basically, Ichthyosaurs are oversized dino-dolphins, that's cool and terrifying at the same time
Genuine question, were they as intelligent as dolphins? If so, then they really are scary cause dolphins are scary intelligent and a menace.
If they behaved like dolphins that’d be terrifying
@@Goultardtheiopgod they would definitely body megalodons if they were as smart as dolphins
over-sized dolphins, over-sized (white?) sharks, over-size (killer?) whales..
...
eitherway, would be cool, if those 3 predators lived at the same time and had a "rock, paper & scissors" relationship.., occasionally fighting each other..
✔️ Yeah, and I've actually seen cave drawings of these dino-fish. You see, my great, great, great , great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great(x 10,000) grandfather was an avid Jurassic era fisherman, who caught one of these things while surf fishing for megalodons.
He was using monofilament line made of 50,000lb test stegosaurus sinew, attached to a lure with a hook made of a brontosaurus rib, with a spinner spoon made of a giant abalone shell.
The cave he lived in has been passed down through millions of my family's generations, so I'm able to look at his cave drawings. Unfortunately, he seems to have exaggerated the size of the fish he caught. He claimed it was 150 feet long and 200 tons in weight, when we know it was actually only 1/3 that size!
This is just proof to me that Ichthyosaurs have been getting the Edmontosaurus treatment in paleo media for a super long time (i.e insinuation that they're nothing but helpless prey items.) and that they are infinitely more terrifying than Hollywood ever gives them credit for.
Frankly I’d argue they had it much worse than hadrosaurs. Most hadrosaurs (with one or two exceptions) and other ornithopods were still viable prey or large predators, just not easy prey (in the same way Buffalo and zebra can put up a serious fight against lions).
Ichthyosaurs on the other hand weren’t even the prey but rather the predators in a number of cases.
@@bkjeong4302 My guess is that everyone assumes that they only hunt fish, when that ain't the case at all.
Sadly hollywood only cares about the biggest
we need a new baseline for what older animals were tbh. most of them were much scarier and bigger then hollywood depicts them as. these animals were not peaceful at all. they were all ferocious predators. capable of hunting t rex / megalodon with ease.
@@johnmarkson1990nasty, sharp, pointy teeth gnyar, gnyar, gnyar, crunch
“Theres always a bigger fish”
-Qui Gon Jinn
You are goddamn right!
Yeah, just turns out it was a reptile.
@jordonus8018 Sando aqua monster the so called "bigger fish" is a mammal
Thank you for doing the ichthyosaurs a little bit of the justice they deserve, i can't believe people are still hyperfocused on the big shark when these guys were around.
I think folks are mostly focused on meg because sharks are still around. That and sharks are pretty neat.
Big Shark still cooler.
Ikr, I had a dinosaur encyclopedia and the size comparisons showed that they were bigger than megalodon
Lmfao probably because the big shark is the largest predator class to ever live, and sharks are more popular in general. Do you actually think a Megalodon wouldn’t THRASH an Icthyosaurid?
It has the strongest bite ever measured at 48,000 psi, at largest it can be 3/4 the size of an arctic blue whale, and was partially related to one of the most feared sharks alive, the Great white🤷🏿♂️
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I just want to say, your presentation, regular citation and critical engagement with academic work sets your work on youtube above the rest. I appreciate how you explore these papers with the math and physiology involved. I'm an undergrad chasing their dream of working in paleontology, and this work you're doing is extremely helpful in putting names on my radar and introducing me to methodology I'm just not getting in my main biology courses (yet). I intend to specifically email several of the cited workers here after I read their papers myself. Thank you so much, and I'm so excited to see what you put together in the future!
Thank you so much! I'm on a very similar path (finishing my undergrad and looking into paleontology programs), and something I can't recommend enough is the Paleo Portal webinar program run by Brian Curtice. Brian brings in paleontologist guest speakers twice a month into zoom meetings to present research and network with the students. It's $10 a month, but it is absolutely worth it!
@@TheVividen Thank you so much for that recommendation!
@@TheVividenIs it by this that you and your crew came across this future megapredator ?
@@francissemyon7971 Actually that was something that Apexzious discovered via his own contacts with researchers and private collectors. But Paleo Portal is a fantastic networking tool as well!
@@TheVividen Good to know and extremely intriguing. What could outclass in firepower an old female O. megalodon ? Latest upper estimate in the recent literature using summed crown width is a Chilean tooth in Shimada (2022) suggesting a 19.9-21.7 m fish with the corresponding killing apparatus...
I’ve been hearing about a “Yellowstone Hyperpredator”? Apparently it’s hinted at in this video.
I can't wait for some size estimates to come of this :)
They'll be there!
So… any updates on the “true largest macropredator in history” video yet? Still hyped for it, lol.
Yea ive been looking and no info published. Hyped but Im loseing faith in this so called "hyperpredator". With that said can't wait hope it lives up to the hype.
@@carlsjoberg7110 Yeah… about that. Have you heard of the “yellowstone hyperpredator”? I believe it’s what he was referring to. It’s supposed to be this gargantuan toothed whale from the late Oligocene that is supposedly the largest macropredator by far. It’s obscure, and hasn’t been named yet, and was allegedly going to be described this month, but I doubt that’ll happen, so we’ll have to wait and see.
Its megalodon @@SlothOfTheSea
@@ISURAH-484 Yeah, I fell for the myths, lol. Still, the whale might exist.
@@SlothOfTheSea Icthyotitan severnesis is 82 feet long
As a Swissman and palaeoenthusiast I am surprised I've never heard of that discovery at all before!!
Best paleo channel on youtube
Great video! Thank you for your in-depth analysis and knowledge, I can tell you're very passionate about paleontology. Looking forward to your next video about the Largest Macropredator!
I swear, the more we learn about Ichthyosaurs the more it seems, they evolved to test every body style way back then. It's sad that they get passed over as "just prey" when obviously they fought for their right at the top.
I mean, yeah it could take on the meg and livyatan, but since it’s Swiss, it’ll just claim neutrality instead.
I slight detour but I wonder if the mosasaurs hadn’t been wiped out would they have become more shark like/ whale like and would they have gotten bigger?
Good video. For a long time even I myself viewed ichthyosaurs as "lesser" marine predators compared to pliosaurs and mosasaurs. The giant triassic ichthyosaurs were assumed to live like modern sperm whales and beaked whales, diving deep to feed on squid. It's now clear that ichthyosaurs were the first large tetrapod superpredators, and very scary ones at that.
Really nice video. Only thing I'd say is regarding ramming: as the excerpts note, the study found different pathology distributions across ichthyosaurs over time. It's the post-Triassic, thunniform ichthyosaurs that commonly had injuries on their ribs, which suggests ramming (and body slamming and tail slapping, like modern odontocetes). Triassic ichthyosaurs had injuries more commonly distributed on their hindlimbs and tail, and with their anguilliform swimming mode, they were probably less likely to employ or survive ramming. Anguilliform swimming relies on flexion of the torso, and if your ribs are broken, this becomes debilitating (although, crocodiles, which are anguilliform swimmers, will strike each other with their heads in combat). Triassic ichthyosaurs DO have bite traces, so they definitely bit each other. Also, their anguilliform swimming meant that their whole bodies were a lot more flexible than those of thunniform swimmers, granting them superior maneuverability and agility. Coupled with the fact that even early ichthyosaurs had elevated metabolisms, a Shonisaurus, Himalayasaurus, or Swiss Tyrant would be more agile swimmers for their size than something like Livyatan or megalodon.
Good catch. Yes, Triassic ichthyosaurs would likely not have done ramming nearly as much, but since it was more Late Triassic rather than a more basal form, I thought perhaps it may be slightly more applicable in this instance. I think the anguilliform swimming means they had better agility/turn radius than many animals. Livyatan as a marine mammal was endothermic with a high metabolism and O. megalodon had a body temperature intermediate to great whites/regional endotherms and true endotherms like modern cetaceans, so the difference in metabolism may not be so significant but definitely a boost for the ichthyosaurs when it comes to speed and activeness in general.
@@Apexzious Yeah, megalodon and Livyatan (obviously Livyatan) certainly had elevated metabolisms too, I just brought it up for Triassic ichthyosaurs just to make clear that they probably were on even footing with regionally endothermic sharks and cetaceans in activity. For what it's worth, Temnodontosaurus was more fish-like than the rest mentioned in this video, and Kyhytysuka (one of the last ichthyosaur genera, which happened to be macropredatory) certainly would've been too, so I think odontocete-like ramming, body slamming, and tail slapping was fully possible for them.
@@toothclaw6985 anguilliforms? probably not, shastasaurids alredy had rotund torsos and forked tails, so they had definetly alredy evolved more advanced methods of swimming like subcarangiform or carangiform
The first mistake was putting Megalodon and Livyatan in the same sentence as they aren’t similar by any means save for size.
Megalodon on average was obviously much faster and more maneuverable than the sperm whale predecessor, though I’m not sure of the other animal since I’m commenting before watching the video.
I’m just saying the Livyatan and Megalodon comparison is quite tiring as they didn’t even sit at the same levels in their respective food chains, seeing as Megalodon sat 2 whole trophic levels above it, and they solemnly ever actually competed for food to begin with.
The shark ate much more, and much larger prey, as a hypervorous, cannibalistic shark that may or may not have snacked on its siblings before birth.
The Icthyosuarid wouldn’t be holding a candle to the shark, and rest assured! Being that it was between 50-100 tons of pure muscle, teeth, and the strongest bite of anything to ever breath.
I'd be careful with biteforce estimated. Estimating biteforce from mechanics, without taking into account muscle attachment points or body morphology otherwise can yield outlandish figures. Even just a basic examination of ichtiosaur skulls reveals a profound lack of attachment points for large mandibular muscles - something that is a uniting factor among all heavy biting animals to have ever lived. In fact other traits, like the small, sharp teeth and the long snout all suggest predation of fishes. Sure, you can call it "macropredatory", but then again, I don't see why anyone would have thought that a 20 meter marine reptile could survive without eating large fish. On the other hand, the skull is unequipped to take out animals of similar sizes.
The idea that you can measure bite force at the BASE of the skull not only doesn't take into account musculature, as I stated before - it also makes it blatantly clear that the author hasn't thought for longer than a second about the statement. How would large bodied prey get to the absolute base of the skull? All hard biting long snouted animals - dogs, bears, crocodiles, tyrannosaurids, you name it - have a profoundly powerful front bite as well - because you can't expect to use the base of the jaws to do all the work. This is like suggesting you can bite someone with your molars.
So what you’re saying is there’s actually evidence that this was more like a dolphin and that it couldn’t eat megs and the livyatons
@@wokencs330 Considering both of those animals lived tens of millions of years later, yeah, sure.
The dolphin analogy os actually pretty close, if you compare the mandible of a modern day sperm whale to a large Ichtiosaur, you'll see many similarities.
Actually, of the hard-biting animals you mentioned, only tyrannosaurs (and big cats, which you didn’t mention) have adaptations for powerful bite at the front of the jaws; all the others have a much weaker bite at the front of the jaws than at the base of the jaws, even crocodilians. Canids in particular not only have a weaker bite at the front but also consistently have weaker jaws and teeth compared to similarly-sized pantherine cats (instead having more laterally compressed canines for slashing at prey).
This doesn’t even get into the fact that you don’t necessarily need bite force to kill large prey efficiently, because bite force is only a small part of what makes a bite dangerous. Gape, sharpness of teeth, and forces produced by other parts of the predator’s anatomy (such as for force of it swimming into its prey, or in land animals the pushing and pulling forces behind the teeth generated by the neck) all play important roles as well.
And did you literally ignore what the video pointed about many ichthyosaurs NOT having small conical teeth but much larger teeth specialized for macropredation, and with bladed edges in many cases? Or that some of them DIDN’T have long, narrow snouts? You’re now straight-up lying to argue that literally every ichthyosaur ever was only capable of eating animals much smaller than itself.
@@wokencs330
The other guy is wrong with some of his facts, don’t take him too seriously.
@@bkjeong4302
*AKCHUALLY!!!*
I never said dogs, or bears, or even tyrannosaurs have identical bites at the base of their jaws as at the snout. That's nonsense, due to the leverages of the skull the front will always bite weaker. So maybe stop putting words in my mouth.
Maybe if you actually read what I wrote, you're have seen that I specifically wrote "long snouted", because obviously it's worthless to compare a f_cking shonisaurus skull to a cat skull or mustelid skull in terms of biomechanics.
What I WAS talking about, though, which you ignored, is ADAPTATIONS for strong bites. For instance - a slightly tilted jaw angle both in canids, bears, AND many carnivorous dinosaurs serves to bring the plane of biting BACK, closer to the masticator muscles. This, again, increases leverages in the front, as well as in the back. Ichtiosaurids typically have no such adaptation.
On another note, the muscle attachment points on the skulls of mammal predators, as well as tyrannosauids, are as close to the snout as possible without sacrificing mobility - again, to increase bite force across the skull. Meanwhile the skull of ichtiosaurs is almost triangular, with muscle attachment points being in the very back of the skull.
Then there's heterodontism. Both the aforementioned mammals, AND large bodies apex predator dinosaurs like tyrannosaurus, OR even crocodilians, show some level of heterodonty, with the front teeth in the skull being more adept at holding onto prey - longer, pointier, to penetrate deeply into the prey, and hold into it. Do you see this in ichtiosaurs? No. They had no such adaptation to hold onto prey - so they had their MASSIVE 1 inch teeth, coupled with their weak a__ bite force. That's not gonna hold a pliosaurus.
"You don't need bite force to kill large prey efficiently"
Well, you can always use bow and arrows, but I doubt ichtiosaurs had opposable thumbs.
Here's the thing though. You can make the argument that ichtiosaurs hunted large prey WITH weak bite force - and of course, you'd have to find some evidence to back that up -, BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT THIS VIDEO PRESENTS. It talks about bite force specifically as evidence of "macropredatory" behaviour (disingenuously insinuating that the "macro" refers to the size of the PREY, when in fact it refers to the PREDATOR).
So don't bring up other methods of predation to account for a weak bite force, unless you concede that ichtiosaurs had the bite force of a giant pair of grill tongs.
As for the teeth... instead of listening to the video, maybe you can, you know... look at what those teeth actually looked like. I did. You didn't. Because I prefer evidence, you're just a "dino fan" who doesn't give two sh_ts about reality - you just want your 5 minutes of trivia to tell your mom.
You're obviously a hostile little b_tch because your favourite fat scaly dolphins were insulted with the truth. Again, you don't even know what the f_ck macropredatory means. You just lapped up the slop thrown to you by the creator of this biased video.
Maybe instead of trying to nitpick my arguments, just find a f_cking therapist, and tell them that meanies insulted your tub-a-lard lizard online.
Because newsflash: ichtiosaurs were never EVER apex predators. And you can take that to the f_cking bank.
I love how innocent they look😂 10:52
I’m picturing it being about 2 meters, with one huge tooth.
amazing opinion
i'm also picturing megalodon as a 1 foot long fish that just had one massive tooth that consisted of over 50% of it's body lenght
It's crazy that the three largest marine predators are a fish, a reptile, and a Mammal.
"It's crazy that the three largest marine predators are a fish, a reptile, and a Mammal."
- no, the 3 largest are all mammals; blue whale, fin whale and sperm whale
- and I'll save you your next reply and my response; yes, they are predators. They kill and consume other organisms, that's predation
@@Dr.Ian-Plect 100 ton megalodon specimen: *bonjour*
@@Ledinosour673 Irrelevant:
*au revoir*
@@Dr.Ian-Plecthe means active predators, not filter feeders. don't be pedantic
@@imlivinginyourceiling I'm not interested in you stepping in for him. And excluding filter feeders isn't pedantic, it's a category of predation.
Hello Vividen, this was a wonderful breakdown but I had a question. At 10:00 you mentioned that Tyrannosaurus had a maximum bite force of under 50K newtons, but when searching for this paper all I can find are estimates of 57,000 newtons or more with only one being 35,000 in a paper regarding juveniles. Would you say this new estimate is more accurate than the prior ones due to recency?
The one he mentioned in the video was based off of the T.rex Stan, which is a relativity small T.rex, which could explain the lower bite force.
@@AgroAcro Ah okay
That Post Credit scene is absolutely epic. It has me so hyped!
wow... a marine predator larger than megalodon! can't wait for paleontologists to suddenly declare that megalodon was 100 feet long with teeth the size of spear, and weighed over 1000 tons
Lol true, Meg is one of "those" species, like the T- Rex and Argentinosaurus. It's like there's a curse preventing it from being surpassed.
The magic growing megalodon. I swear the shark gets bigger and bigger every year, lol!
It’s amazing that ichthyosaurs at least for some species. Very very huge.
no surprise really if you followed prehistoric news for years..its well known they could potentially get larger than the collected specimens as many experts hypothesized years ago....
I live in Switzerland, am obsessed with prehistoric creatures and i have never heard of this before! New topic to dig in ❤
We have a lot of lakes, and really big marmots up in the mountains, but are an unlikely location to find super-sized ocean creatures
You can see parts of the specimens on display at the paleomuseum in Zurich ;). Feel free to visit :)
I learned about ichthyosaurs through a documentary long, long ago (which on a fairly recent rewatch made me tear up from an ichthyosaur scene), and I thought they were incredible creatures and wished they were still around
Then, as the years went on, I didn't hear much around them
Aside from the fact that out of the 3 big marine reptile groups, they died out first, making my love for them slightly dwindle
But this video has reignited that love, and I am so grateful for it!
Ichthyosaurs rule once again!
I’m going to watch walking with dinosaurs now
is the documentary following a single individual from birth to death cause that fucking destroyed me as a kid
@@dylanhurley7136 what documentary is that
This is very impressive, informative, and accurate. I especially like how you don't exaggerate anything. My favorite part of this is the predatory whale _Livyatan melvillei_ , and the giant shark _Otodus_ (formerly _Carcharodon_ ) _megalodon_ , of the Neogene period. I didn't know, until I saw this presentation of yours, that _Livyatan_ could grow to be 15.11 meters (49 feet 6⅞ inches) long and 50,770 kilograms (111,964.6875 pounds) in mass, with teeth up to 18.1 centimeters (7⅛ inches) long above the gum line and 9 centimeters (3½ inches) thick, and the _O. megalodon_ could reach 15.93 meters (52 feet 3⅛ inches) in length and 61,560 kilograms (135,716⅝ pounds) in mass, with a dorsal fin 1,715 millimeters (5 feet 7½ inches) high and teeth 111.2 millimeters (4⅜ inches) long above the gum line. I also didn't know that present-day sperm whales are less bulky for their length than _Livyatan_ was for its length, and that _Otodus_ rather than _Carcharodon_ is the giant shark's valid genus name. I thank you for sharing this excellent work of yours.
60 tons megaladon will reach 18 meters not 16 meters 16 meters megalodon will only have weight 50 tons
First video of yours I've come across and I am loving it! Less watered down than your average paleo channels for sure and something more akin to a scientific paper but the script and your editing helps bring it together. Good shit and looking forward to the next one. Gonna check out the backlog as well. Cheers!
How would you think shonisaurus hunted its prey? It’s jaws are slender but had robust teeth. How would it tackle large prey? By crushing them or tearing flesh? I think they had a strong posterior bite force and swallowed some of the prey items whole
It didn't have "robust teeth". The video said deep seated, which is true of all teeth. The size and shape of the teeth is consistent with other piscivorous animals.
It ate fish. End of f_cking story. It ate fish like gharials do today.
That narrow bill like jaw means it could snap it shut quickly for taking fast prey
@@murunbuchstanzangur I.e. fish.
@horvathbenedek3596 yeah, or squid, or, you know,fast moving soft bodied prey
@@horvathbenedek3596 Sources still said it could take on large bodied prey and other marine reptiles by puncturing them.
I clicked on this video thinking that the reptile on the thumbnail that is in color, is to scale with the other silhouettes. That would've been a multiple of blue whales.
I love how we can all geek out over stuff like this
Looking forward to the nuclear explosion you've promised!
So, what actually is the name of this ichthyosaur species? I’m trying to learn more about it, but it’s a bit hard to do so when you don’t know what it’s called. 😅
It doesn't have an official name yet, so we're calling it the Swiss Tyrant for now. Martin Sander said it represented an unknown species, and it has yet to be fully described and named.
14:17 thank you for including comprehensible units for Americans.
A video about predatory ichthyosaurs feels somewhat incomplete without including the Thalattoarchon saurophagis.
Excellent work, regardless. Eagerly looking forward to more amazing videos in the future. Good luck. 👍
24:15 Thalattoarchon cameo! They remembered it exists.
Excellent overview :). One slight comment: the ichthyosaur material in the Besanosaurus holotype are definitely a fetus and not ingested material. Paper on this topic is in the works. Authors on the 2020 Guizhou paper didn’t really do their homework unfortunately. Besanosaurus is therefore likely out as macropredator given the extreme slender snout and minimal gape.
Great video as always dude. Keep up the great work!
so the ichthyosaurs just peaked at their begginig, huh? They produced gargantuan forms like shonisaurus, combospondylus youngorum, the Swiss tyrant (possibly a species of himalayasaurus), Lilstock monster and Aust collosus, all at the very beggining of their reign, didn't they? The biggest ichthyosaur of the Jurassic was a measly 10 meter long Temnodontosaurus and in Creetaceus a simiraly sized Longirostria. While the pliosaurs peaked in the Cretaceus, milions of years after they've appeared, and Mosasaurs peaked at the very end of their existence.
Not really. The big ichthyosaurs quickly became outcompeted or died off. That happens a lot to large predatory animals, since they are most vulnerable to sudden climate change. When their prey becomes smaller or dies off, so do they. Ichthyosaurs held onto late into the cretaceous.
@@42ZaphodB42 except it wasn't just a sudden climate change, it was the END TRIASSIC MASS EXTINCTION
Indeed tomas
this can be explained from the fact that when the icthyosaurs first appeared, the sea was still recovering from the worst mass extinction of all time, the great dying, therefore, they faced little to no competition and so easily managed to dominate, peaking at their very begginings
The plesiosaurs originated in the late triassic, and so, they had to live in an ocean that was alredy crowded and were prey to the giant icthyosaurs like shoni and swiss tyrant
When the End triassic mass extinction happened, a lot of icthyosaurs died out, barely re-estabilishing themselves as top predators, but then the toarcian extinction killed off those predatory icthyosaurs, allowing the plesiosaurs to finally take their place and dominate, spreading into a wide variety of shapes and sizes and becoming top predators themselves, wich is why they peaked in the early cretaceaous, with predatory forms like kronosaurus and sachicasaurus
mosasaurs had the same story as plesiosaurs, they started out in a sea that was alredy crowded with plesiosaurs and small icthyosaurs, it was only when a series of sudden climate change killed off the icthyosaurs and pliosaurs that mosasaurs could take their place as new dominant predators, wich is why they peaked right at the end of their reign
I thought that the Aust colossus and the Lilstock ichthyosaur were the same animal?
This will be awesome.
All these Rex and Megalodon fanboys in the comments, get a new favorite, yours is getting old and boring, you don't have to defend them all the time, they are overused and overrated already, no need to get hostile to protect your only love, I'm glad I ain't as dull as you lot, only having one overused favorite, while I have more than 100.
I kinda actually want a filter feeder Ichthyosaur. You don't have to be killing macroscopic animals to be cool.
It's your lucky day! One was just described today! phys.org/news/2023-08-whale-filter-feeding-prehistoric-marine-reptile.amp
Perhaps part of the problem might be that palaeontologists consider most ichthyosaurs to be fish eaters- that is, eaters of marine organisms the size of modern mackerel or cod. They kind of forget that the largest bony fish ever was swimming about at roughly the same time, Leedsicthys ... and that there must have been bigger fish than mackerel about to eat, too. Also, what out there is going to eat all those sharks as well?
Nevada has a national monument named after the ichthyosaurs. The area is just thick in the rocks with ichthyosaur skeletons.
Yes, Berlin ichthyosaur state park. The largest known ichthyosaurs for a long time, until larger ones were described in the early 2000s.
And yes, considerably larger than _Liopleurodon_
_Liopleurodon_ was about the size of a large great white shark or small orca, not in the same league as the largest ichthyosaurs or even many larger pliosaurs.
Looks like the lilstock monster has an official name, Ichthyotitan severensis.
What is with youtubers insisting on using background music, to then not level it at all? It's video editing 101 but it seems to be too advanced for 90% of youtube.
Icthyotitan severnesis is an estimated 82 feet long thats an insane size
Wow exelent video, so much information and in an optimal pace, thanks!
is this hectors itchyosaur?
No, Hector’s is way, way larger (assuming the measurements are correct)
I think paleontologists are a bit childish. They like dreaming about huge monsters as big as King Kong and Godzilla. As far as we know for sure ( I mean with evidence, not speculations ) the blue whale is still the biggest animal which ever existed, and Shonisaurus is still the biggest Ictyosaurus
Big fish: *exists*
Humans: :O!!!!
Huh, Is this some new discovery I haven't heard of? The last one was with Sarabosaurus and Abingdon pliosaur, but this and that is not an ichthyosaur, and Sarabo is not mega big either. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to this film to watch it and find out what it hides:))
I'm excited for you to find out!
@@TheVividen 🙂🙂
It looked liked a basilosaurus
@@PrinceIkossie That's another new upcoming predatory animal on August 2nd, 2023 published by paleontologists. Everyone will be talking about it, but there is something up our sleeves if you've seen the post credit scene in the vid.
@@PrinceIkossie basilosaurus isnt water lizard, and is not ichtyo
Congratulations, I am mind blown and now horrified at the knowledge that whale sized macropredatory Ichthyosaurs likely existed.
I like the ichthyosaurs in Ark. They behave as friendly animals
New giant ancient water-based macro predator just dropped leg's gooo
I have always been intrigued by the bony eye plates of ichthyosaur fossils. Between the protection and apparently very large eyes, do these imply they may have dived very deep?
Yes, at least some of them were able to. Larger eyes are needed for lower light conditions, so ichthyosaurs with proportionally larger eyes would be able to dive quite deep. Bony scutes would help to resist the high pressures at such depths.
Awesome video as always.
very happy you credit paleoart when shown, HUGE THANKS
what makes me curious the most is that throughout history, probably since the first large-scale emergence of secondary-aquatic species (idk the correct english term, the species that evolved from prior land ones) we had an ecological niche of a marine macro-predator, either as the apex branch of those secondary-aquatic ones, or, as a Meg, a hunter on those (I think it's been established, that the Meg was a citation hunting specialist), however, sinse the megalodon died out about 4m years ago we had this ecological "throne" empty, sperm whales being the clostst, but choosing the highly specialized lifestyle. Where is the new monster? It couldn't be us the factor that have prevented it's emergence, could it? Or has it simply not been enough time since the meg?
Orcas prevent other predators from becoming giants
An intelligent, sperm whale sized dolphin-reptile with teeth the size of railroad spikes.
Update: blue whale sized. I don't think there would be a 'swimming with ichtyosaurus' tour.
Happy birthday to this video!
I'm sure not everyone is like this, but I love when creators add academic credits and make it easily accessible, I love going to paper rabbit holes!
This video is the epitimism of "holy shit get to the fucking point"
This was surprisingly easy to listen to, you've done a great job! It would be cool if we saw a itchyosaur coming in and demolishing a megalodon in the next Jurassic World sequel.
31:56 Hectors ichthyosaur
Based Paleo Channel 🗿
I have August 2nd circled on my calendar.
The Swiss tyrant looks like a roided mosasaur
Bull sperm whales used to be much bigger before genetic depletion by whaling. There are reports of 24 meters long sperm whales from old whalers.
Yes, but there were eight sperm whales in 500 000 measured individuals that were supposedly bigger than the commonly accepted maximum of 20.7 m, and their reliability has been questioned. I am not saying they couldn’t have been that big, but their relevance is essentially zero.
@@Ornitholestes1 "500 000 measured individuals" Most of them defenseless cow packs. Bulls could relatively easily evade whaling by diving down. The bull that sunk the Essex, probably the largest officially recorded specimen, was only got caught because he tried to defend a pack of cows.
@@nickkorkodylas5005 Maybe, although in the whaling data that I know, there are actually four times as many males as females. Might be a result of a biased sample, but it is interesting that this seems to occur across several different datasets (Matthews 1938, Fujino 1959, Clarke and Paliza 1972, Nakamura et al. 2013)
This is only a sample of 323 whales, but of these 256 are males.
A strong bias against large bulls would also run counter to the very selective pressure thought to be responsible for giant bull specimens being rarer nowadays than they used to be. If giant bulls were so much more rarely taken by whalers as compared to smaller specimens, rather than selectively targeted due to their size, then why did Sperm whale bulls get smaller, rather than larger, in response to whaling? You would expect sperm whale size to increase if smaller specimens were more heavily selected against by whaling.
But given that you are right, and McClain et al.’s data are heavily biased towards females (they unfortunately are pretty tight about giving useful information on their sperm whale sample), that still means we are probably talking about the largest eight (debatable) specimens in a sample of at least a few hundreds of thousands, a truly negligible fraction. Even if all of them were really reliably measured, that would still mean they make up at most in the region of 0.00001 % of the male population.
As for the Essex sperm whale, I don’t recall that specimen ever being killed and reliably measured, or was it? Surely a guesstimate by a terrified sailor isn’t what one would consider an "officially recorded" measurement.
---refs:
Clarke, R. and Paliza, O. 1972. Sperm whales of the Southeast Pacific. Part III: Morphometry. Hvalrådet Skrifter 53: 1-106.
Fujino, K. 1956. On the body proportions of the sperm whales (Physeter catodon). Scientific Reports of The Whales Research Institute Tokyo, Japan 11 (47-83).
Matthews, L.H. 1938. The sperm whale, Physeter catodon. Discovery Reports 17: 93-168.
Nakamura, G., Zenitani, R. and Kato, H. 2013. Relative skull growth of the sperm whale, Physeter macrocephalus, with a note of sexual dimorphism. Mammal study 38 (3): 177-186.
yea your right,i recal reading the size chart ,and also current blue whales are around 75ft with 100ft being very rare....all due to near depletion most of the last centuries...right whales also used to reach up to 80ft back in the 1900s but now they are closer to 60ft...
True
Thank god the oceans oxygen levels are much lower culling giant feeders like this due to inability to support the needs for their prey and themselves.
One day, they came to the surface to breathe and never went back down until they starved to death and their carcasses sank into the abyss.
well...
the oxygen levels of the triassic were pretty low compared to ours
@@Ledinosour673 and periods with high oxygen had much more. Someone doesn’t understand pendulums.
They're also a good early underwater tame in Ark.
33:05
Let me guess...Humans?
Great informative video and awesome art throughout. Thanks for crediting the illustrators and using AI.
Oh my goodness. What did these things eat????
Heeey, checked out a few of your videos and I'm now subscribed. I'm a big fan of your longer form video with cited sources and purposeful imagery. Keep up the great work sir!
Greetings from the BIG SKY. I've seen many fossil bones in our eastern lands.
Awesome video, I can't wait for the next one, I wiwh y'all had a good dayx
All largest needs to have asterisks of "so far" in addition to the blue whale sized ichthyosaur a balasosauir, aka early snake whale might have been even bigger then a blue whale.
Thoughout childhood I was told Paraceratherium was the biggest mamal ever, and turns out is number 2 vs a prehistoric elephant of the past.
but the potential is there for huge specimens to reach such sized...i wouldn't be surprised when more whale size specimens are found ...most blue whales currently on average reach around 70-75ft...100ft are very rare currently...
Still waiting for 150 ton Leuropleurodon...
Keep waiting man, it ain't happening.
@@a-lambo-boi Maybe.
@@andrewdrednaught how so?
@@a-lambo-boi Not "how". It was a pun at Walking with Dinosaurs.
@@andrewdrednaught I kinda guessed, but I saw a thread of someone claiming a size of 26m and 165 tonnes (on this video, in case you're interested) and that it'd be released next July or something. If you want you can check it, but yh, that probably messed up my response.
Cool
Exciting.
Wasn’t sue in the 2022 bite force study not Stan ?
Big boi
Need to see this macro predator video😭
The article should be getting released in less than an hour!
@@TheVividen I'm binge watching your videos right now while painting as I have just discovered your channel earlier. Amazing paleocontent man keep it up :) on your vocal chord vid😎
I am excited where can i find it.
The paper that will be published
@@PrinceIkossie It's paywalled, but you can rent the paper for 48 hours www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06381-1
He's really happy in the thumbnail! Such a cute little guy!!
Like dolphins?
Unfortunately his not big enough
nice video
These animals are small. Genuinely small. The largest apex predators are actually The giant pacific octopus with a tentacle length of 12000 kilometers long, and a head span across being 6000 kilometers across. There is also Leviathan who is a stunning 14,450 kilometers long, Much larger than megalodon, who although large was niot as large as the aforementioned creatures. The animals here were food for these monstrous animals. That whale I found its tail it measure over 900kilometers across. its body was destroyed by time but the tail and spinal structure is still visible today.
Bro thinks Subnotica creatures were real 😂
For someone stumbling upon this, it's a confusing onslaught of data, but on the other hand, it's way more professional than all those pseudo documentaries that just say "that's it, this is hoe it was".
What shocks me (which it shouldn't, it's obvious in hindsight) is the amount of pure speculation from one speculated variable to another.
If we ever discovered one of them way smaller/lighter, suddenly everything shifts.
What would be interesting to me, are a crocodile, a tuna, a shark and a whale of comparable sizes also in comparable mass classes? I would highly doubt that, so how was the first mass prediction even made? Tbh, how do we even know the mass of a sperm whale?
Sperm whales have been almost hunted to extinction in the 19th and early 20th century. They have been weighed. Obviously.
moist
Always
Close to a max Blue or bowhead whale size or same?
I won't say too much before the video releases, but it's definitely bigger than a sperm whale!
@@TheVividensperm whale can reach weight 100 tons are u sure about that?
@@widodoakrom3938 Bigger than an average sperm whale, I'll say
@TheVividen A 60 foot long Ichthyosaur is terrifying.
vividen lives in a vivid den
giant
I don't know who looked at an ichthyosaur and thought, "That's a filter feeder"
This is exactly the kind of paleontology material that I have been missing in my life. I really appreciate it how you dig into the data, the quotes and citations and discussion of the available evidence. Gives me joy 💙
Speaking as someone who ended up in the humanities it is also really interesting to see the different interpretations at work. Really great stuff, thank you!
Imagine all the critters that never fossilized and we just can't definitively know about because any evidence of their existence is long, long since cycled thru the Earth's geological goings on, or they're just so deep in the Earth we can't access them.
She sell sea shell on the sea shore. Icthyosaurs where amazing and one of the reasons I first became interested in paleontology. I wonder how Mary Anning would react to how much we have learned since she first started digging on the beach.
That thumbnail?