An artist's illustration of a newly described species of ichthyosaur called Thalassodraco etchesi swimming in the Late Jurassic seas off the coast of England. (Megan Jacobs)
Smithsonian Magazine has a story about the discovery of a new Ichthyosaur in England. The animal, called Thalassodraco etchesi "Sea Dragon", was discovered on the beach near Dorset, England. It lived about 150 million years ago during the late Jurassic Period. The species name etchesi is for the discoverer Steve Etches. A paper published in PLOS One provides the description of the species.
An amateur fossil hunter scouring an English beach discovered a new species of bug-eyed, barrel-chested marine reptile that patrolled the area’s prehistoric seas roughly 150 million years ago, reports Christa Leste-Lasserre for New Scientist.
When Steve Etches started to extract what he soon recognized as an ichthyosaur fossil from a white band of coastal limestone near Kimmeridge Bay in Dorset, he thought the teeth looked unusual. Unsure of exactly what he’d dug up, Etches sent the mineralized bones off to paleontologists at the University of Portsmouth for a closer look, reports Jack Guy for CNN.
Ichthyosaurs were sleek, dolphin-like reptilian predators with sharp teeth for snagging fish, squid and other prey. After years of examination, the researchers determined this particular specimen was not just a new species, but that it was different enough from other known ichthyosaurs that it merited the creation of a new genus.
