news.buyenne.com

Enlarge (credit: Sergey Krasovskiy)

Blue whales have been considered the largest creatures to ever live on Earth. With a maximum length of nearly 30 meters and weighing nearly 200 tons, they are the all-time undisputed heavyweight champions of the animal kingdom.

Now, digging on a beach in Somerset, UK, a team of British paleontologists found the remains of an ichthyosaur, a marine reptile that could give the whales some competition. “It is quite remarkable to think that gigantic, blue-whale-sized ichthyosaurs were swimming in the oceans around what was the UK during the Triassic Period,” said Dr Dean Lomax, a paleontologist at the University of Manchester who led the study.

Giant jawbones

Ichthyosaurs were found in the seas through much of the Mesozoic era, appearing as early as 250 million years ago. They had four limbs that looked like paddles, vertical tail fins that extended downward in most species, and generally looked like large, reptilian dolphins with elongated narrow jaws lined up with teeth. And some of them were really huge. The largest ichthyosaur skeleton so far was found in British Columbia, Canada, measured 21 meters, and belonged to a particularly massive ichthyosaur called Shonisaurus sikanniensis. But it seems they could get even larger than that.

Enlarge / The Mercedes-Benz E-Class is the brand's workhorse, covering millions of km a year ferrying German taxi passengers around. (credit: Peter Nelson)

Mercedes-Benz's E Class badge possesses a lot of canon. When asked to picture a '90s-or-newer Mercedes full-size sedan, it's hard not to conjure up mental snapshots of W124-and-up generations schlepping around well-heeled suburban communities. I bet a lot of folks also picture the taxi lineup outside any German train station, too.

Well, at least I do. But I'm not talking about envisioning surly Munich cabbies but rather the faithful four-doors they putter around in. A lot of them are E Classes, which further proves that the cars have always been quintessential Mercedes luxury workhorses.

The brand-new 2024 E 350 4Matic, with its thrifty turbo-four powerplant, might have the most direct lineage in the US market to those cream-colored rickety diesels. It's easy on fuel for its size and ready to soak up all the miles across both traffic-ridden cityscapes and high-speed stretches of highway. And with its expansive suite of tech and mild hybrid propulsion, it's an overall great next chapter for the badge.