Definition of "ichthyosaur" [ich•thy•o•saur]

• Any of various extinct fishlike marine reptiles of the order Ichthyosauria of the Triassic Period to the Cretaceous Period, having a porpoiselike head and an elongated, toothed snout. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Oh, I also made it through two articles in the new Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology yesterday, "Generic reassignment of an ichthyosaur from the Queen Elizabeth Islands, Northwest Territories, Canada" and "A remarkable case of a shark-bitten elasmosaurid plesiosaur.""
• "To extend a previous comment, an ichthyosaur (extinct reptile), a dolphin (mammal), and a tuna all arrived at essentially the same solution to the problem of how to move quickly through the water."
• "A favorite of the museum, Markham said, was a three-meter-long ichthyosaur, a marine reptile resembling a dolphin that had existed some 90 million years ago."