* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Ichthyosaur

Blobrana · L

Ichthyosaur fossil graveyard found in Chile

Paleontologists have discovered nearly 50 entire ichthyosaur fossils in southern Chile, calling the find one of the best to date
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Blobrana · L

Ichthyosaur fossil at Charmouth narrowly misses storm destruction

A near-complete ichthyosaur skeleton discovered on the Dorset coast after Christmas storms was hours away from destruction, fossil hunters have said.
Storms uncovered the 1.5m fossil at the base of Black Ven near Charmouth on Boxing Day.
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Blobrana · L

Fossil saved from mule track revolutionises understanding of ancient dolphin-like marine reptile

An international team of scientists have revealed a new species of ichthyosaur (a dolphin-like marine reptile from the age of dinosaurs) from Iraq, which revolutionises our understanding of the evolution and extinction of these ancient marine reptiles.
The results, produced by a collaboration of researchers from universities and museums in Belgium and the UK and published today (May 15) in Biology Letters, contradict previous theories that suggest the ichthyosaurs of the Cretaceous period (the span of time between 145 and 66 million years ago) were the last survivors of a group on the decline.
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Blobrana · L

German marine reptile find rewrites fossil record

German experts have found a new species of prehistoric marine giant from a time when most of that family of reptiles were thought to have died out.
The rare ichthyosaur find from the Braunschweig area, northern Germany, is 130 million years old, dating from the Lower Cretaceous era.
Most ichthyosaur fossils date from the Jurassic era, millions of years before.
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Blobrana · L

Ichthyosaur found in school vegie patch

A school student and groundsman have unearthed a giant dinosaur-like sea creature in a vegie garden, 100 million years after the ancient inland sea it once roamed dried up.
Year 10 student Raymond Hodgson and groundsman Ben Smith were digging corner posts for a vegetable garden at the Richmond State School, in western Queensland, when they made the find.
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Blobrana · L

If you came across, while swimming in dark waters, the creature that lurks inside the Oregon Trail Regional Museum you'd probably scream.
And then you'd probably be eaten.
Fortunately, this 50-foot beast's flesh-devouring heyday is long past.
Like 220 million years past.

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-- Edited by Blobrana at 21:21, 2007-06-17

Blobrana · L

An 8 million-year-old fossil of an ancient marine creature, lost for over 20 years, was rediscovered in 2002 at the University of Alberta underneath a ping-pong table and the results of the fossil research have only recently been released.

"(The fossils) made it under the ping-pong table in the undergraduate teaching lab, which ended up being the undergraduate teaching table that all the specimens for the palaeontology classes would be laid out upon for the students to look at ... I did my undergraduate [at the University] in the ’80s, and the irony is that the ping-pong table Ichthyosaur was under my feet the whole bloody time" - Dr Michael Caldwell, University of Alberta’s professor of vertebrate paleontology

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Blobrana · L

Canadian scientists named a new species of ancient marine reptile "Ping Pong Ichthyosaur" for the spot where the prehistoric fossil was stored for 25 years.

"It was pretty amazing to realize this valuable discovery had sat under a Ping Pong table for 25 years. But I suppose that after 100 millions of years in the dirt, it's all relative" - Michael Caldwell, a University of Alberta palaeontologist.

Embryos found within the marine fossil's pregnant body also mark the most recent record of a live birth and the physically smallest known ichthyosaur embryos.
A few decades ago graduate students collected several ichthyosaur specimens -- the marine animals resembled dolphins and fish -- in the Northwest Territories. Somehow the bones ended up stored beneath a Ping Pong table in the science undergraduate lab.
When Caldwell arrived in 2000, he found the boxes and, working with then undergraduate student Erin Maxwell, Caldwell learned the bones were from the Lower Cretaceous period, and were about 100 million years old.

"What was really interesting was at this point in history the Ichthyosaur goes extinct. So anything from this time is going to be really important" - Michael Caldwell.

The research appears in the journal Paleontology.