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Description
This is another photo I took while in London's Natural History Museum back in 2006. It shows an ophthalmosaurus, which was a type of ichthyosaur, a marine reptile, looking much like a dolphin.

Although they were around in the age of the dinosaurs, they shouldn't be considered one (ignore my opportunist use of "dinosaur" for one of the tags ). Ichthyosaurs shows the results of convergent evolution, in that the animal shares lots of physical similarities with dolphins and large fish, yet they're reptiles and not related to either. In convergent evolution, species that are evolutionary far apart end up sharing common physical traits due to fitting into environmental niches.

Description
This is another photo I took while in London's Natural History Museum back in 2006. It shows an ophthalmosaurus, which was a type of ichthyosaur, a marine reptile, looking much like a dolphin.

Although they were around in the age of the dinosaurs, they shouldn't be considered one (ignore my opportunist use of "dinosaur" for one of the tags ). Ichthyosaurs shows the results of convergent evolution, in that the animal shares lots of physical similarities with dolphins and large fish, yet they're reptiles and not related to either. In convergent evolution, species that are evolutionary far apart end up sharing common physical traits due to fitting into environmental niches.