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Paleontologist Dean Lomax of the University of Manchester compared the size of the Ichthyosaurus
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Anglian Water / dpa
It is the largest and most complete fossil of its kind that has ever been discovered in Great Britain, the British news agency PA reported on Monday. The ichthyosaur discovered when part of the Rutland Water reservoir was routinely emptied is therefore around 180 million years old. "It is a most significant discovery, both nationally and internationally, but also of the greatest importance to the people of Rutland and the surrounding area," said Mark Evans of the British Antarctic Survey, according to the PA report.
The University of Manchester paleontologist Dean Lomax, who directed the excavation, told the BBC that it was "one of the greatest finds in the history of British paleontology." Several larger teeth were found around the skeleton - presumably from other marine reptiles that once gutted the carcass of the exposed animal.
Ichthyosaurs, reptiles that live in the sea, resembled dolphins in shape. Their length ranged from one to 25 meters. The first Ichthyosaurus skeleton was discovered in 1811 by the then twelve-year-old paleontology pioneer Mary Anning on the coast of the southern English county of Dorset. The ichthyosaurs lived at the same time as the dinosaurs, but developed completely differently. In the Triassic 250 to 200 million years ago, reptiles migrated from the land to the sea and became more fish-like, during which time they also reached their maximum size.
The specimen found now comes from the later Jurassic and is probably assigned to the species Temondontosaurus trigonodon known from Germany.
The ichthyosaurs of the Jurassic were usually significantly smaller than their ancestors, which became extinct at the end of the Triassic.
The discovery of Rutland Water shows that ichthyosaurs like whales "reached gigantic size more than once in the course of their history," commented Jorge Velez Juarbe from the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles on the scientific value to "National Geographic".
The paleontologist, who was not involved in the British excavations, was part of a team that only described a significantly larger find from Nevada in Science in December: the skull of the ichthyosaur from the Triassic alone measured almost two meters.
ak / dpa
