How British agency BAE Media communicates, scientists from the universities of Southampton and Edinburgh discovered that the ancestors of the ichthyosaurs, existing in the Mesozoic era, mixed and began to evolve for deep diving, similar to whales and dolphins.
Researchers compared the remains of Thalattosuchians - creatures that lived during the age of dinosaurs, with ancestors of whales and dolphins, and studied this process, which lasted 10 million years. They noted that whales and dolphins originated from mammals that inhabited the land. During this time, ichthyosaurs, surrounded by skeletons, decreased, while instead they developed ichthyosaurs and air chambers behind the skull.
This allowed to reduce pressure when submerged at greater depths, enabling dolphins to reach hundreds of meters below the sea surface, while whales - thousands of meters, not damaging their skulls.
