On 5/4/24 1:26 PM, trolidous wrote:
> On 5/3/24 17:16, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 5/3/24 3:45 PM, trolidan wrote:
>>> On 4/30/24 12:19, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> On 4/30/24 10:47 AM, trolidan wrote:
>>>>> On 4/26/24 14:27, erik simpson wrote:
>>>>>  > On 4/26/24 12:35 PM, trolidous wrote:
>>>>>  >> On 4/25/24 06:29, Popping Mad wrote:
>>>>>  >>> On 4/22/24 11:47 AM, erik simpson wrote:
>>>>>  >>>> On 4/22/24 12:05 AM, jillery wrote:
>>>>>  >>>>> On Wed, 17 Apr 2024 20:38:47 -0400, Popping Mad
>>>>> <rainbow@colition.gov>
>>>>>  >>>>> wrote:
>>>>>  >>>>>
>>>>>  >>>>>>
>>>>> https://www.wsj.com/science/largest-marine-reptile-sea-dragon-whale-a527269f?mod=wknd_pos1
>>>>>  >>>>>
>>>>>  >>>>>
>>>>>  >>>>> The above link requires a subscription in order to read it.
>>>>> Another
>>>>>  >>>>> article about the discovery of Ichthyotitan severnensis
>>>>> appears here:
>>>>>  >>>>>
>>>>>  >>>>>
>>>>> <https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/remains-what-could-largest-marine-32609308>
>>>>>  >>>>>
>>>>>  >>>>> and here:
>>>>>  >>>>>
>>>>>  >>>>>
>>>>> <https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0300289>
>>>>>  >>>> As usual, the pop articles do what they can to inflate is
>>>>> subject, but
>>>>>  >>>> this critter is definitely comparable to the biggest
>>>>> ichthyosaurs
>>>>>  >>>> known.
>>>>>  >>>
>>>>>  >>> It is not every day the WSJ gives space to fossil discoveries.
>>>>>  >>
>>>>>  >> Well you know if there were one Plesiosaur, there might be more
>>>>>  >> than one.  And in but a blink of an eye in geologic time Scotland
>>>>>  >> may have been covered with a lot of glaciers.
>>>>>  >>
>>>>>  >> Nonetheless if this article is paywalled, the articles showing
>>>>>  >> plesiosaurs in the Great Glen getting tossed a few fish while
>>>>>  >> in some of those locks may be less expensive.
>>>>>  >>
>>>>>  >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caledonian_Canal
>>>>>  >>
>>>>>  >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Glen
>>>>>  >>
>>>>>  >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Ness
>>>>>  >>
>>>>>  > If only Nessie were a Ichthyosaur!  I'll drink an Ichthyosaur
>>>>> Pale Ale
>>>>>  > to it.
>>>>>
>>>>> So I did a little surfing on this on Wikipedia.
>>>>>
>>>>> What are the odds.
>>>>>
>>>>> The least common ancestor of the Ichtyosaurs and
>>>>> something else was a:
>>>>>
>>>>> species of sauropsida
>>>>>
>>>>> species of synapsida
>>>>>
>>>>> synapsida and sauropsida are closer to each other than
>>>>> they are to ichthyosauria
>>>>>
>>>>> ichthyosauria are actually derived from amphibians
>>>>>
>>>>> Do you have any inside information from all of those
>>>>> paywalled technical journals?
>>>>>
>>>> It would help a lot if you could actually cite the sources for these
>>>> various notions. Were the citations all provided in a single
>>>> Wikipedia article? If so, what?
>>>>
>>>> I'm going with Sauropterygia, a subgroup of Diapsida, a subgroup of
>>>> Sauropsida.
>>>
>>> Here is a cut and paste from the Wikipedia article I was
>>> surfing through earlier.
>>
>> You will note that many of the claims are considered obsolete, and
>> there are exactly zero claims, even obsolete ones, that ichthyosaurs
>> are not sauropsids, i.e. that they're synapsids.
>>
>
> Maybe it is less uncertain than I thought.
>
> For amphibians it did mention Friedrich von Huene
> in the 1930s.

Exactly. As far as phylogenetic science goes, that's ancient history.

>> And the end is the most current idea: definitely diapsids associated
>> with Sauropterygia and probably archosauromorphs.
>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthyosauria
>>>
>>> Evolutionary history
>>> Origin
>>>
>>> The origin of the ichthyosaurs is contentious. Until recently, clear
>>> transitional forms with land-dwelling vertebrate groups had not yet
>>> been found, the earliest known species of the ichthyosaur lineage
>>> being already fully aquatic. In 2014, a small basal ichthyosauriform
>>> from the upper Lower Triassic was described that had been discovered
>>> in China with characteristics suggesting an amphibious lifestyle. In
>>> 1937, Friedrich von Huene even hypothesised that ichthyosaurs were
>>> not reptiles, but instead represented a lineage separately developed
>>> from amphibians. Today, this notion has been discarded and a
>>> consensus exists that ichthyosaurs are amniote tetrapods, having
>>> descended from terrestrial egg-laying amniotes during the late
>>> Permian or the earliest Triassic. However, establishing their
>>> position within the amniote evolutionary tree has proven difficult,
>>> due to their heavily derived morphology obscuring their ancestry.
>>> Several conflicting hypotheses have been posited on the subject. In
>>> the second half of the 20th century, ichthyosaurs were usually
>>> assumed to be of the Anapsida, seen as an early branch of "primitive"
>>> reptiles. This would explain the early appearance of ichthyosaurs in
>>> the fossil record, and also their lack of clear affinities with other
>>> reptile groups, as anapsids were supposed to be little specialised.
>>> This hypothesis has become unpopular for being inherently vague
>>> because Anapsida is an unnatural, paraphyletic group. Modern exact
>>> quantitative cladistic analyses consistently indicate that
>>> ichthyosaurs are members of the clade Diapsida. Some studies showed a
>>> basal, or low, position in the diapsid tree. More analyses result in
>>> their being Neodiapsida, a derived diapsid subgroup.
>>>
>>> Since the 1980s, a close relationship was assumed between the
>>> Ichthyosauria and the Sauropterygia, another marine reptile group,
>>> within an overarching Euryapsida, with one such study in 1997 by John
>>> Merck showing them to be monophyletic archosauromorph euryapsids.
>>> This has been contested over the years, with the Euryapsida being
>>> seen as an unnatural polyphyletic assemblage of reptiles that happen
>>> to share some adaptations to a swimming lifestyle. However, more
>>> recent studies have shown further support for a monophyletic clade
>>> between Ichthyosauromorpha, Sauropterygia, and Thalattosauria as a
>>> massive marine clade of aquatic archosauromorphs originating in the
>>> Late Permian and diversifying in the Early Triassic.
>>>
>>> That Ichthyotitan seems like it was almost as large as a blue whale.
>>>
>>> Comparing with a calculator and interchanging units.  I am thinking
>>> the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria were about two thirds the length
>>> of a blue whale, but modern cruise ships, aircraft carriers, or
>>> tankers and container ships made of metal are about 10 to 20 times
>>> the length of a blue whale and have the surface area of about
>>> a hectare on the ocean.  Some of the largest Roman galleys also
>>> made of wood might have been three or four times the length of some
>>> of those 1500s ocean going vessels, but they likely often used
>>> oars more for motive power.
>>>
>>> As for Nessie, I have no idea how easily a cetacean could have
>>> used the lock and damn system underneath the shadow of a ship
>>> in the Caledonian Canal in say the middle 1800s.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>