A Look at Jurassic 'Whale Falls'

Experts recently uncovered the fossil of a marine reptile whose remains had been gnawed on by long-gone scavengers of the ocean floor. This fossil is one of the first ancient parallels to modern "whale falls" and could help researchers better understand what corpse-eater ecosystems were like nearly 160 million years ago.

The fossil is of an ichthyosaur - a 10-foot-long, dolphin-like predator that stalked the oceans from the middle Triassic to late Cretaceous periods. This specific ichthyosaur was long deceased before it was fossilized, allowing local marine life to move in on its corpse to feed after it fell to the ocean floor.

In modern times, similar events occur with the bodies of deceased whales, and are called whale falls. Scientists often visit whale falls to study ocean-bed organisms in action, understanding that there is a diverse and exciting ecosystem that quickly develops around it while also helping decompose these fallen titans.

This must not have been so different for the ichthyosaur. Dating back to about 157 million years ago, a community of ancient corpse-eating organisms must have flocked to the fallen body to feed, leaving evidence of their presence in the fossil record.

However, according to Richard Twitchet of the Natural History Museum in London, this is the first time anyone has actually studied the Mesozoic equivalent of a whale fall in detail.

Twitchet co-authored a study detailing findings made by him and his colleagues that was recently published in the journal Nature Communications.

According to the study, a team of researchers at Plymouth University closely examined the ichthyosaur fall, finding tiny fossils inside and on the large predators bones. They found bite marks and grooves that indicate a feeding frenzy occurred soon after the fall, and also mollusks similar to those seen in a modern whale fall, which feast on blood and fluid oozing from the flesh-stripped remains.

In whale falls there is a final stage as well, in which microbes invade the animal's bones, degrading them as well until little is left. These microbes are traditionally hunted by worms that are drawn to the remains.

But interestingly, there was no sign of this final stage. Instead, traces of sea urchins and oysters were found, suggesting that the bone-dwelling microbes of this time were on the plate of these creatures instead.