It is also thought to be the first of its particular species — Temnodontosaurus trigonodon — to be found in Britain.
Marine reptiles that lived alongside the dinosaurs, ichthyosaurs resembled dolphins in body shape. They became extinct around 90 million years ago, after first appearing 250 million years ago.
The ichthyosaur was first uncovered in February last year in the Rutland Water Nature Reserve by Joe Davis, a conservation team leader from Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust, which operates the nature reserve in partnership with owner Anglian Water.
Then followed a large-scale excavation in August and September by a team of paleontologists, led by Dean Lomax, an ichthyosaur expert and current visiting scientist at the University of Manchester.
“The size and the completeness together is what makes it truly exceptional,” Lomax told CNN, adding that previous finds of ichthyosaurs in the UK had been “nowhere near as complete and as large as this.”
Lomax said it was the most complete large specimen — which he classified as being 10 or more meters in length — found globally. He said it was “a really fantastic discovery” as well as, for him, “a real career highlight.”
“This was a top of the food chain, apex predator,” he told CNN of the discovery. “So this would have been dining on other ichthyosaurs, it would have been eating large fish, it would have eaten, if could catch them, squids as well.”
However, Lomax said the discovery was the “tip of the iceberg,” with much left to uncover of the…
Source : cnn
