Mammal With 4 Nostrils

Reconstruction of Muiscasaurus Catheti (Credit: Daniel Dick)

Millions of years before dolphins were around, dolphin-like marine reptiles roamed the oceans. They were called ichthyosaurs.


A new species has now been uncovered in the Paja Formation in Colombia's eastern Andes.

The 130-million-year-old creature had a very strange nose, unlike that of any reptile alive today. 

Each nostril was split into two separate openings, a feature that distinguished it from all other known ichthyosaurs. It has been named Muiscasaurus catheti.

It is hard to reconstruct exactly how it looked, says Erin Maxwell of the Natural History Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, who analysed the fossil.