Fossil deepens dinosaur mystery
Partial skeleton of ichthyosaur found in Iraq
A fossil from Iraq has deepened the mystery surrounding the fate of ichthyosaurs, dolphin-like reptiles that swam the oceans millions of years ago.
Ichthyosaurs ranged in size from around a metre to more than 20 metres in length
The partial skeleton belongs to a creature that lived alongside the dinosaurs in the Cretaceous age.
Scientists previously thought this type of ichthyosaur vanished more than 66 million years earlier during the Jurassic Period.
The ancient “living fossil” had hardly evolved in all that time, a new study published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters shows.
Until recently experts had believed ichthyosaurs declined gradually during a number of Jurassic extinction events.
The new research, together with the discovery of another ichthyosaur last year, indicates that the creatures still thrived during the early part of the Cretaceous.
It raises a large question mark over the final disappearance of the ichthyosaurs around 95 million years ago, long before the meteorite impact which is believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs.
The newly identified ichthyosaur has been named Malawania anachronus, which means “out of time swimmer”.
Lead scientist Valentin Fischer, from the University of Liege in Belgium, said: “Malawania’s discovery is similar to that of the coelacanth in the 1930s: it represents an animal that seems ‘out of time’ for its age.
“This living fossil of its time demonstrates the existence of a lineage that we had never even imagined. Maybe the existence of such Jurassic-style ichthyosaurs in the Cretaceous has been missed because they always lived in the Middle East, a region that has previously yielded only a single, very fragmentary ichthyosaur fossil.”
The fossil was originally found by British oil geologists in the 1950s. Preserved in a large slab of rock, it was being used as a stepping stone on a mule track.
Ichthyosaurs ranged in size from around a metre to more than 20 metres in length.
All gave birth to live young and some might have been warm blooded, like whales and dolphins.