Ichthyosaur Discovery

Some of you may remember that I went to Charmouth a few months ago to look at the Black Ven rock units where some of the Scelidosaurus bones have been found. Well thanks to the recent stormy weather, a nearly complete ichthyosaur skeleton has been discovered in the same area. The fossil is 1.5m long and was removed in eight hours, before another storm was due to hit. Only missing part of its snout and a few vertebrae, it is one of a handful of nearly complete ichthyosaur specimens from the Jurassic Coast. Stormy conditions help to reveal fossils such as this one as the winds hit the cliffs, knocking off some of the loose material that would have originally been covering them. Several fossil hunters have been visiting the area in the hope of finding more fossils, as the recent storms have produced some of the best conditions for finding fossils on the beach in several years.

Ichthyosaur Skeleton (courtesy of the BBC)

Ichthyosaurs (courtesy of the BBC)

Now to give you a bit of background information. Icthyosaurs, otherwise known as fish-lizards, were dolphin-like predatory reptiles that swam in the oceans around 245 million years ago. Some species could have reached speeds of 22mph, and they sat quite happily at the top of the food chain, before dying out 90 million years ago, when they were replaced by the plesiosaurs. Plesiosaurs were long-necked marine animals that swam at around 5mph. They lived from 205 million years ago until the extinction event 66 million years ago.

Plesiosaur (courtesy of the BBC)