Whilst taking a promenade along a picturesque , rocky beach in south Wales , a computer programmer with a warmth for fossil hunting stumble upon a rather singular find : a 7 - infantry - long skeleton in the closet of an ancient , predatory reptilethat float our ocean from the Jurassic to the Cretaceous full stop . What ’s more , expert believethat the specimen could be gross , making the uncommon discovery even more exciting .
The fossil was found alongPenarth beach , Glamorgan , which is the most popular daub in Wales for fossil collectors to fill up their boot due to the abundance and rich variety of specimen so far excavate here . Its discoverer was 34 - year - old Jonathan Bow , who has had a swell interest in dodo for the best part of a decade now .
He first noticed the skeletal system after a small piece , around one inch in size , became exposed on a commute lunar time period in September , BBC News reputation . curtain call and his blood brother then set about the laborious project of uncovering the rest of the specimen , which took them around a day . During this process , the impressive size of the specimen became cursorily apparent , which he eloquently account as a “ whopper . ”
Then , the twain had to begin removing some of the vast amount stone that surrounded the dodo , which weighed some 60 kilograms ( 132 lb ) in totality . After completing this extremely task intensive summons , Bow alarm the National Museum of Wales of the discovery , and it did n’t take long for paleontologists to recognise its potential grandness given the remarkable preservation .
The skeleton belonged to an ancient group of marine vertebrates calledichthyosaurs , which means “ Pisces lizards . ” So far , more than80 different speciesof ichthyosaur have been described since their discovery in the former 19thcentury , but more are being added to the encompassing leaning each twelvemonth .
These animal were not dinosaur , but they did vagabond Earth ’s oceans while dinosaur ruled the nation . They first appeared during the Triassic stop , reachingpeak diversityduring the Jurassic , before dying out during the Cretaceous period- some 25 million long time before dinosaur were wiped out .
Although there is a lot of controversy over what ichthyosaurs evolved from , the early variant had many lounge lizard - corresponding features , lead many to conceive the nation craniate they evolve from wasprobably a lizardof some kind . former ichthyosaurs still possessed necks and also had long , slender bodies which credibly meant that they weaved through the ocean much like modern daytime eel . These creature thenrapidly diversifiedinto a much more streamlined cast with fish - similar organic structure and crescent - form tails , permit them to cruise through the seas at impressive speeds .
Computer generated example of an ichthyosaur . Michael Rosskothen , via Shutterstock . 162711728 .
[ ViaBBC NewsandWales Online ]
