Rulers of the Jurassic Seas

Fish-shaped reptiles called ichthyosaurs reigned over the oceans for as long as dinosaurs roamed the land, but only recently have paleontologists discovered why these creatures were so successful

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RYOSUKE MOTANI, who was born in Tokuyama, Japan, is a researcher in the department of paleobiology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. As a child he found ichthyosaurs uninteresting. (¿They looked too ordinary in my picture books,¿ he recalls.) But his view changed during his undergraduate years at the University of Tokyo, after a paleontology professor allowed him to study the only domestic reptilian fossil they had: an ichthyosaur. ¿I quickly fell in love with these noble beasts,¿ he says. Motani went on to explore ichthyosaur evolution for his doctoral degree from the University of Toronto in 1997. A fellowship from the Miller Institute then took him to the University of California, Berkeley, for postdoctoral research. He moved back to Canada in September 1999.

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Scientific American Magazine Vol 283 Issue 6This article was published with the title “Rulers of the Jurassic Seas” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 283 No. 6 ()
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican122000-522jIEJoKgrET9iinwwFFn

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