About 200 million years ago, a newborn ichthyosaur had one of its first feasts and ate one or more squid. It was going to be the last bite of his life, because he died very soon after.
This is the story told by a forgotten fossil of Ichthyosaurus communis from the collection of the Lapworth Museum of Geology at the University of Birmingham, UK. The remains have been studied by a team of British specialists who emphasize the importance of this specimen: it is the first fossil of a practically complete young common ichthyosaur that is known.
Ichthyosaurs were marine reptiles similar to dolphins, and they became extinct about 90 million years ago, long before the dinosaurs, which did 65 million years ago. According to a 2016 investigation, they disappeared due to the combination of abrupt climate change and their inability to evolve quickly enough to adapt.
A squid
Researchers know that this young fossil ichthyosaur was a baby because of its size (70 centimeters long, the smallest specimen in existence) and the characteristics of the bones in its skull. The adults of the six known ichthyosaur species had lengths ranging from two to twenty meters.
When cleaning and analyzing the fossil, the scientists discovered that between its ribs were numerous fragments of squid tentacles, from which it is deduced that this prehistoric cephalopod was the last meal of the baby ichthyosaur.
Of unknown provenance
British specialists did not know where the analyzed fossil came from, since it was not accompanied by any data on its geographical origin or by a chronological estimate.
The study of the microfossils that accompanied the remains and the rock in which they were petrified allowed us to find out that this young specimen lived between 199 and 196 million years ago, during the Lower Jurassic, and that it had been found in Gloucestershire, in the East of England.
Image: Illustration of baby Ichthyosaurus communis devouring a squid (Julian Kiely, University of Manchester).
