Whose Skin Is That? - Phalanges
Whose Skin Is That? - Phalanges
Earth Science Australia collected this specimen during one of its 14 expedition to western Queensland. The site was a lagoon on the edge of a 11 million year old inland sea. The water at depth in the lagoon lacked oxygen so creatures dying and sinking into this oxygen poor environment were well preserved.
While they look like skin they are actually bones inside the flipper of a large swimming, shark-like, reptile called an ICHTHYOSAUR.
The bones that make up the flipper are called PHALANGES,
the same name given to the finger and toe bones in our hands and feet.
The ichthyosaur skeleton looks like this...
And if we put flesh on the bones... then.. it may have looked like this...
Ichthyosaur Swim Cycle by kyanOs
TV looks cool! - however --- All animated dinosaur reconstructions you see on TV are guesses
at what the creatures may have looked like and how they moved based on their bones and fossilised footprints.
We have zero evidence on how dinosaurs were coloured.
Learn more about our ICHTHYOSAURS and ICHTHYOSAUR FEATURES