If man had lived and swam in the oceans 244 million years ago, swimmers would found themselves swimming among some really huge sea monsters, a 8.6-meter-long reptile with lots of sharp teeth.

The creature, described online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was an early ichthyosaur that existed for a relatively short 4 million years. The remains of the creature were discovered in 1998 in the remote mountains of central Nevada.

Nevada…somewhere near where the contemporary Slam The Dam open water swimming event is held.

Illustration is courtesy of Raul Martin/© National Geographic Magazine with the inset of an ichthyosaur fossil by Jörg Fröbisch/Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin.

Copyright © 2012 by Open Water Source