>>5041839
>>5041839
>>5041846
Ichthyosaurs are awesome and cooler than any glupshittosaurus marine reptile from the JW movies. (also the mosa in that movie changes so frequently in size that it may as well just be godzilla-sized)

The gap between tiny 1 meter ichthyosauromorphs and 17 meter, 40+ ton Cymbospondylus youngorum was ~5 million years.
Not to mention they were absolute crazy predators. Guizhouichthyosaurus was far from the biggest, but still a respectably large animal and was a close relative to other giants like shonisaurus and shastasaurus.
A fossil of one represents that it hunted a thalattosaur (another marine reptile) not much smaller than it and swallowed most of it whole. This likely killed the ichthyosaur in the process (lol) but up until this point, it was thought that guizhouichthyosaurus was simply feeding on fish and squid. Then you have ones like Kyhytysuka and temnodontosaurus who were 1000% eating other marine reptiles. They were far from just 'dolphin-shaped lizards'