For 65 years, the New Walk Museum in Leicester, England, has treasured the remains of a new species of ichthyosaur that no one has been able to identify since. The fossils of this marine reptile, which lived in the Jurassic, 200 million years ago, were found in a quarry in Nottingamshire, not far from where the aforementioned institution stands, where they were taken.
Robert Appleby, a famous British paleontologist, who was the curator of the same museum, intuited that they could reveal something about the evolution of these animals. In fact, few ichthyosaur species are known from the period to which the fossils belong . But although he worked on them practically until his death in 2004, he ended up convinced that they belonged to an already cataloged variety.
Now, Dean Lomax, a researcher at the University of Manchester’s School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences specializing in the study of these reptiles, has found certain unusual characteristics in the remains. In an article published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology , he indicates that, for example, they have bony structures in the shoulder girdle never before described in these animals . Lomax points out that although the specimen is relatively complete – its pectoral bones, several of its vertebrae and ribs, limbs, pelvis and even the skull are preserved – the fossils are very disordered. “It is as if the corpse had plummeted towards the seabed before becoming fossilized,” says this expert.
This new ichthyosaur, called Wahlisaurus massarae , is named after Judy Massare and William Wahl, two paleontologists who have contributed significantly to the study of these animals and whom Lomax considers his mentors. He believes that his find will shed some light on the diversity of these marine predators and their geographical distribution at the beginning of the Jurassic, as the specimen comes from a site where hardly any remains of these reptiles have been found.
Image: University of Manchester
