| Summary: | Dissertation (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2019 Ichthyosaurians (Ichthyosauria) are one of the most prominent groups of secondarily aquatic Mesozoic marine reptiles. Over their 160 million years of evolution, the clade evolved a streamlined body plan with paddle-like limbs, convergent with modern cetaceans. Despite the fact that ichthyosaurians have been studied by paleontologists for over a century, very little is known about aspects of their biology, including quantification of their age structure and growth rates. Multiple lines of evidence, including oxygen isotope, swimming modality, and body shape analyses suggest that ichthyosaurians experienced elevated growth rates and likely maintained an elevated body temperature relative to ambient sea water. In this dissertation, I test these hypotheses using osteohistological methods. In the first manuscript, we describe new material of the small-bodied Upper Triassic ichthyosaurian Toretocnemus from the Nehenta Formation and the Hound Island Volcanics (both Norian, Upper Triassic) of Southeast Alaska. During the Upper Triassic, ichthyosaurians experienced their greatest size disparity, with large-bodied species rivaling the size of modern blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus; 20+ m body length) living alongside small-bodied species (1 m body length) like Toretocnemus. Prior to this study, Toretocnemus was known from Carnian deposits of California and possibly Sonora, Mexico. The referred material described here expands its geographic and temporal range. There are very few known ichthyosaurians from the Norian; thus, this material sheds light on the clade's diversity before the end Triassic extinction event. In the second and third manuscripts, we use osteohistological methods to describe the microstructure of various skeletal elements of two species of Stenopterygius from the Posidonia Shale (Lower Jurassic) of Germany. The Posidonia Shale is a Konservat-Lagerstätten that preserves over 3000 ichthyosaurian specimens, approximately 80 percent of which ...
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