A pair of Platypterigius sp. Image credit: Dmitry Bogdanov / CC BY 3.0.
SciNews has a post about a new species of ichthyosaur from Columbia. Platypterygius elsuntuoso, an ichthyosaur, lived about 125 million years ago during the early Cretaceous Period. Researchers from the Fundación Colombiana de Geobiología collected the fossil remains of a young adult in 1999.
The specimen consists of an almost complete skull, some axial elements including the atlasaxis and a few cervical vertebrae, the left coracoid, and a few phalanges.
“The specimen was found in a concretion in La Cabrera hill, northwest of Villa de Leiva (Boyacá, Colombia) where the Arcillolitas abigarradas Member of the Paja Formation outcrops,” the paleontologists said.
“Its exact geographic provenance is unknown, so it was not possible to determine its precise stratigraphic position.”