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Melting Glacier Reveals Nearly Two Dozen Huge Ancient Sea Creature Fossils Motherboard, Audrey Carleton, May 11, 2021 Chile’s first complete ichthyosaur recovered from a glacier in Patagonia University of Manchester, May 10, 2022 Melting glacier uncovers 'exceptional' prehistoric discovery for researchers By Marianne Mizera, Yahoo News, May 16, 2022 Yours, Paul H.

In an effort to give a more complete picture of life on planet earth during the age of dinosaurs, we did a post to get suggestions from TFF members about some non-dinosaur material. We got a lot of suggestions and it turned out to be a super informative post. We learned a lot and were able to begin the process of creating a better program for the kids. Just before that post, I had attended an amazing Ichthyosaur prep lab. It was found in Northern California, a few hours from hometown. Northern California is a dead zone for collecting fossils. There are some fossils to be found here but none on any private land that I know of. It was really cool to see the work being done on a Norcal Ichthyosaur and it ignited some interest on my part. i had already decided to get some Ichthyosaur fossils for our program prior to the TFF post. Our first Ichthyosaur fossil arrived today. It is a Brachypterigius extremeus vertebra from the Kimmeridge Clay of Weymouth, UK. In honor of the fossil, I will even go metric. It is nearly 7 cm and in pretty nice condition. I love it and I can not wait to add more. @JohnBrewer has some really nice Ichthy teeth for us so soon we will have a really nice section of our program for an animal I am very excited about. The second picture is of a really cool Mosasaur vertebra from Kansas that was donated by @Ramo . It is very compressed, crushed in the fossil process but that actually adds to the coolness to be honest. I love it and it was a hit with the kids in it's program debut last week. I am still learning about Mosasaurs but they will have a bigger spot in the program next school year for sure. The third picture shows a shark tooth display, croc teeth, a Mosasaur tooth, and a Pterosaur tooth. The kids love talking Pterosuars and we will some more pieces in the future. We kind of have to. They are extremely popular with kids and I want to expand on them in program. The shark teeth are Cretoxyrhina, Ptychodus, Scapanoryhnchus, and a Squalicorax. I will expand this display this summer as we add some Hybodonts to it. The Croc teeth are from HC and came from @Troodon . The Mosasaur tooth was a throw in from a purchase through one of favorite dealers. It did not take us long to add some really cool pieces and I am looking forward to adding more. Next fall we will split the dinosaur program into two presentations and that will allow us to expand on the non-dinosaurs as well as the dinosaurs