Could we have discovered the biggest fish ever seen on the earth?

A combined Scottish-Canadian team has verified that the primitive sea animal leedsichthys problematicus is the biggest boned fish yet to travel the seas of the world.

Mounting to lengths of 16.5 m over a projected escalation period of forty years, the Jurassic-era sea animal would have outgrown even today’s huge whale sharks. Although its grand mass, yet, leedsichthys is believed to have been a filter feeder, just like baleen whales, basking sharks and whale sharks are these days.

Discovered from the late 19th century and officially named (after English farmer and fossil collector Alfred Leeds) in 1889, remains of leedsichthys have been unearthed right through Europe, and in South America.

The ‘problematicus’ portion of its scientific brand stems from the indisputable fact that leedsichthys fossils are notoriously tricky to recognize. That is due to the indisputable fact that leedsichthys’ skeleton #was not# made entirely of bone. Large portions #of the# animal’s internal structure were actually #made from# cartilage, just #as a# shark’s bone structure is. Cartilage #does not# mineralize as willingly as bone and, as the result, fossil cartilage is fairly uncommon.

Out of context, the fossilized bones can signify a challenge to palaeontologists. Over the years, remains of leedsichthys have even been posited as belonging to bone-plated fossil stegosaurus!

Because leedsichthys vertebrae was cartilaginous, it may be very difficult to see how long the fish may have been, with some unsupported estimates signifying that it was as long as 30 metres.

However, each time a new, more complete, fossil was found near Peterborough, UK, scientists were finally able to take an exact measurement. Professor Jeff Liston, of our National Museum of Scotland, said, “We sat down and checked out a good range of specimens, not only at the bones, but their internal development set ups as well – just like the expansion rings in plants – to find some ideas with the ages of these animals, as well as their estimated sizes,”

The team ultimately resolute that a tiny adult leedsichthys would grow to 8 or 9 m after some 20 years and, in another 20 years; it could get to about 16.5 m in length. This is larger than the whale shark, the biggest bony fish living these days, despite persistent and credible reports of whale sharks developing as long as 14 m in length.

This information is thrilling to scientists and natural history enthusiasts as it guarantees a functional insight into the alterations in ocean life that occurred up to and during the Jurassic era.

Scientists now believe that filter-feeding sea animals began as quite small animals, before growing to massive sizes we all know nowadays. The outstanding mass of leedishthys problematicus thus implies that there was a huge surge in the plankton populace of that Mesozoic seas.

The discovery also requires a serious change to the records.

 

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Could we have discovered the biggest fish ever seen on the earth?