Search for crossword answers and clues
Any of several marine reptiles of the Mesozoic having a body like a porpoise with dorsal and tail fins and paddle-shaped limbs
Answer for the clue "Any of several marine reptiles of the Mesozoic having a body like a porpoise with dorsal and tail fins and paddle-shaped limbs ", 11 letters:
ichthyosaur
Word definitions for ichthyosaur in dictionaries
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Word definitions in Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
extinct reptile, 1830, Modern Latin, from Greek ikhthys "fish" + sauros "lizard" (see -saurus ).
Wiktionary
Word definitions in Wiktionary
n. Any of several extinct fishlike reptiles, of the order ''(taxlink Ichthyosauria order noshow=1)'', that had a body somewhat like a porpoise. (from c. 1830)
Wikipedia
Word definitions in Wikipedia
Ichthyosaurs ( Greek for "fish lizard" - ιχθυς or ichthys meaning "fish" and σαυρος or sauros meaning "lizard") are large marine reptiles . Ichthyosaurs belong to the order known as Ichthyosauria or Ichthyopterygia ('fish flippers' - a designation introduced ...
WordNet
Word definitions in WordNet
n. any of several marine reptiles of the Mesozoic having a body like a porpoise with dorsal and tail fins and paddle-shaped limbs [also: ichthyosauruses (pl)]
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Word definitions in The Collaborative International Dictionary
Ichthyosaur \Ich"thy*o*saur\, n. [Cf. F. ichthyosaure.] (Paleon.) One of the Ichthyosaura.
Usage examples of ichthyosaur.
These plates may have changed the shape of the eyeball in response to water pressure, allowing the prey to remain in focus as the ichthyosaur chased after it.
The baby was found in marine deposits, but it is not certain whether the baby hatched on land and died at sea, or if it was born live at sea like an ichthyosaur and then died.
There was ring of bone within the eyehole, as in the ichthyosaur which probably had a similar function.
High Priest looked down at the monster, a gigantic ichthyosaur, swimming back and forth in the deep pool, the surface of which was about ten feet below the bottom tier of seats.
The sea serpent disemboweled it, ripping open the tough hide and spilling ichthyosaur entrails into the stormy subterranean sea.
Save for its long, beaklike snout, the ichthyosaur resembled a supershark, forty feet from snout to tail, and every inch of that forty feet crammed with mindless hunger and ferocity.
However, reptiles flourished in the Jurassic open oceans and seas, where ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and sharks were abundant.
It seemed clear that McInturff and his egg-hunting cohorts would either hang me from a willow tree or paddle me out to sea and toss me overboard to the archaic fishes or ichthyosaurs that yet remained.
In the sea, this included the mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and ichthyosaurs, and in the air, pterosaurs.
The end of the tail was bent downward, as in advanced ichthyosaurs, suggesting the presence of a large vertical fluke.
Vision appears to have been acute in ichthyosaurs, as in most predators.
Carbonized skin impressions have been found around the skeletons of ichthyosaurs in the black shales at Holzmaden, Germany.
Holzmaden reveal baby ichthyosaurs within the body of the mother, indicating that the young were born live.
Appearing in the oceans about the same time as the ichthyosaurs were another group of euryapsid reptiles called the nothosaurs.
The limbs of nothosaurs show none of the modifications seen in ichthyosaurs and they could have supported the adult on land if they came ashore to lay eggs.