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Some Triassic ‘Dinosaur Bones’ Belonged to Giant Ichthyosaurs, Paleontologists Say SciNews, April 9, 2024 Perillo, M. and Sander, P.M., 2024. The dinosaurs that weren’t: osteohistology supports giant ichthyosaur affinity of enigmatic large bone segments from the European Rhaetian. PeerJ, 12, p.e17060. Yours, Paul H.

After a crazy few previous years with pandemics , new baby and many other things, I was really keen to rip into 2023 and make some good finds at Richmond and it didn't disappoint. Richmond which is in Western Queensland is part of the Toolebuc Formation which is a marine deposit from early Cretaceous in age. We made it out there three times this year it's about an 8 hour drive which a very harsh climate of over 40c for half of the year below are some of the finds we made this year. Eromangateuthis soniae (previously referred to Boreopeltis) , Giant Squid remains were close to a 1m long. 2. Small Turtle bone cluster not rare but still a nice find. 3. Sorry not a great photo but this is Pterosaur limb bone which has now been donated to the museum. 4: This is a nice Kronosaurus (K. queenslandicus) tooth that we found right next to the squid fossil not a large one and was broken but as it is rare we are still happy with this. 5: While shark teeth are common this is our 1st pair of shark verts we have found. 6: This is hard to make out but this is jumbled large fish , this fish didn't have a well preserved vertebrae so is a bit messy but all the ribs etc have been preserved. I'm still working on prepping this. 7: A large almost compete Chimearoid spine which is a soft-bodied, shark-like fish , we also found another smaller one. Our goal of coming out here over the last 5 years was to find some nice Ichthyosaur bits now on a whole this has eluded us which has been frustrating at times how ever we stuck at it and on our last day of our last trip we found a juvenal Ichthyosaur Platypterygius australis, bones included limb, verts, jaws, teeth, ribs , paddle bones and more. Below is a bit of a dump of photos from this specimen it is at the museum so will be prepped at a later date where i will place up some updates when they do. Finally a couple o snaps of our set ups to beat the heat . Thanks everyone for your support and help over the last year lets bring on 2024 ,a bird bone is my goal this year also a big thanks to the Kronosaurus Corner Museum for helping us out. Good luck to everyone this year with your fossil adventures. Cheers

Oldest 'fish-lizard' fossils ever found suggests these sea monsters survived the 'Great Dying' By Harry Baker, LIveScience, March 18, 2023 The fossilized remains of an ichthyosaur dating back to shortly after the Permian mass extinction suggest that the ancient sea monsters emerged before the catastrophic event Oldest sea reptile from Age of Dinosaurs found on Arctic island Uppsla University, March 13, 2023 The paper is: Kear, B.P., Engelschiøn, V.S., Hammer, Ø., Roberts, A.J. & Hurum, J.H., 2023: Earliest Triassic ichthyosaur fossils push back oceanic reptile origins. Current Biology 33(5), R1-R2 Yours, Paul H.

A priceless fossil destroyed in WWII has resurfaced in an unusual way Ashley Strickland, November 4, 2022 "The original fossil was highly significant in being the very first complete skeleton of any prehistoric reptile fossil ever found at the time,..." The open access paper is: Lomax, D.R. and Massare, J.A., 2022. Rediscovery of two casts of the historically important ‘Proteo-saurus’, the first complete ichthyosaur skeleton. Royal Society Open Science, 9(11), p.220966. Your, Paul H.

Probably one of the most enigmatic species of Temnodontosaurus is Temnodontosaurus eurycephalus, owing to only one skull ever having been found. This particular species is often described as a snub-nosed temnodontosaur with massive teeth and heavy jaw muscles that it probably used to hunt other ichthyosaurs (and other marine reptiles). Its holotype is currently held by the Natural History Museum in London, with the below being some images of it, taken off of Wikipedia: My interest with it, at present, lies with its dentition, with the morphology of its teeth. For I've seen some truly massive teeth and equally massive roots come out of Lyme Regis that I currently consider to belong to T. platyodon based on specimens labelled as such in the NHM collections (see images below for illustration, but please note that Ichthyosaurus platyodon is an old synonym for T. platyodon). And while these teeth seem morphologically similar to the teeth of Mary, Tony Gill's T. platyodon specimen (image below; source), I find myself wondering how these teeth compare to those of T. eurycephalus. Unfortunately, however, I've been able to find very little information or quality photographs on this particular species. I'd therefore like to ask if anybody here has any photographs - in particular crisp/detailed ones of the dentition - or articles (regrettably, I can't access pay-walled) that they'd be willing to share. Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone, I’m curious about an object that is attached to a fossil I recently purchased. This ichthyosaur skull is approximately 50 cm long and adjacent to the snout there’s a darker grey 3-4 centimetre object embedded in the matrix. I keep getting questions from friends about what it is but I have no idea (my wife has started to tell people that it’s an ichthyosaur corpolite, however I’m not convinced). I wrote to the Natural History Museum here in Sweden but they don’t know either. Can anyone here help solve this small mystery? Thanks, TFF is great

'Fish lizard' fossils found in Swiss Alps belonged to some of the largest creatures that ever lived By Ashley Strickland, CNN, April 28, 2022 The open access paper is: P. Martin Sander, Pablo Romero Pérez de Villar, Heinz Furrer & Tanja Wintrich, 2022, Giant Late Triassic ichthyosaurs from the Kössen Formation of the Swiss Alps and their paleobiological implications. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Published online: 27 Apr 2022, Article: e2046017 Yours, Paul H.

Ichthyosaur fossil found in Nevada named for brewery founder Jim Krajewski, Reno Gazette Journal, Jan. 11, 2022 Central Nevada ichthyosaur fossil reveals surprising information KOLO, Channel 8, Nevada, Dec. 25, 2021 Papers are: Delsett, L.L. and Pyenson, N.D., 2021. Early and fast rise of Mesozoic ocean giants. Science, 374(6575), pp.1554-1555. Sander, P.M., Griebeler, E.M., Klein, N., Juarbe, J.V., Wintrich, T., Revell, L.J. and Schmitz, L., 2021. Early giant reveals faster evolution of large body size in ichthyosaurs than in cetaceans. Science, 374(6575), no. eabf5787. Related paper is: Kelley, N.P., Motani, R., Embree, P. and Orchard, M.J., 2016. A new Lower Triassic ichthyopterygian assemblage from Fossil Hill, Nevada. PeerJ, 4, p.e1626. Peer j. web page with link to PDF Yours, Paul H.

Utah man discovers fossilized ‘fish-lizard’ at Flaming Gorge Reservoir By Jordan Miller, Salt Lake Tribune, October 7, 2021, Paleontologists recover rare “Fish-lizard” fossil in Utah By Eliza Craig, KSL News Radio, October 6, 2021 Utah boater finds fossilized 'fish-lizard' at Flaming Gorge By Matthew Sampson, KUTV, October 5, 2021 Some papers: Sprinkel, D.A., Chidsey Jr, T.C. and Anderson, P.B., 2010. Geology of Flaming Gorge National Recreational Area, Utah, Wyoming. Geology of Utah's Parks and Monuments: Utah Geological Association Publication, 28, pp.277-299. More papers, Douglas A Sprinkel, Utah Geological Survey Yours, Paul H.

Early June, two years ago, I found this ichthyopterygian vertebra in a small nodule out of the northern French Middle Triassic, from the Upper Muschelkalk. Almost two years to the day later a friend of mine helped me complete its preparation this month. When done, one of the first things that struck me were the elongate, and slightly tilted rib attachment sites. As far as I know, such rib attachment sites do not occur in any parvipelvian ichthyosaur species, which, instead, have round, button-like, attachment sites, especially on dorsal vertebrae as my find is. Now I realise that ichthyosaur vertebrae typically hold very little diagnostic value, but I was wondering whether the peculiar rib attachments might be indicative of a super-family, family or even genus, so that I can label the vertebra more informatively than "indet. basal ichthyopterygia". Nothing is known of the species at the sites where I found this, though, based on size alone, Cymbospondylus sp. seems like a good candidate. Any other ideas? @Pemphix @sander @paulgdls @Welsh Wizard @Crazyhen Dimensions of the specimen: 41mm (diameter) x 21 (depth)

I’ve been trying to find out what ichthyosaurs are found in Dorset, from the Lyme Regis, but I’m having quite a bit of trouble. I’ve found sites that list the species of different types of animals found at certain locations, but I can’t find anything like that about “Dorset” or “Lyme Regis”. At the moment I’m interested in finding out out the ichthyosaurs, but in the past I’ve looked for the same thing about plesiosaur/pliosaur, and croc species, so that would be great if anyone had information about pretty much any species of reptiles found there. Thanks very much for any and everyone’s time and effort! As always, it’s extremely appreciated!

Hi all- They don't call it Good Friday for nothing. The Sundance Fm is something I have wanted to explore on my own for a while and I finally got the chance to do a little exploring in this Jurassic Ocean of Wyoming last Friday. I went to a new (-ish ranch). My girlfreind and I went to this place two years ago on Easter and found dinosaurs in the Morrison Fm. Nothing worth collecting but there they were. This this time I went to explore the beds below the Morrison. The first outcrop I got to was a little outcrop of a layer that I have seen many times before... it is loaded with star shaped crinoid stem pieces... Pentacrinites. I have a bunch of these already, but I always collect a sample when I find the layer. I also know that there are rare occurences of other echinoderms in this layer. I found some sea urchin spines. Then off to the main hillside. At the base of the hillside I found the same layer exposed, but much more extensively and I started hunting for the more elusive echinoderms. And it worked... I found a crinoid head with a bit of stalk. And the remains of a starfish. As far as I know there are only two complete starfishes from this layer known from Wyoming, both in private collections. Even parts and pieces are rare. Here is the crinoid.... the calyx is at the bottom and slightly eroded; one feather arm is quite visible. Above the calyx is a piece of the stem, with cirri visible. Pentacrinites is known for its cirri... little 'branches' that come off of the 'stem'. This will never be a superb crinoid specimen like we have seen from other folk. The echinoderms from this layer do not prep well at all... you get what you get. Still this is my very first crinoid calyx. Yee haa. And the starfish is only three busted arms. Excellent finds for one day. Now I was off to upper layers... uphill in search of ichthyosaur bones. The Sundance is often littered with belemnites, and this slope was not any different. Lots of belemnites. Then I found this chunk of rock. At the very top of the Sundance is a platy sandstone layer that has nice pterosaur tracks. But these are only found south of Casper, so I was not expecting to see this at all. I was not even close to the top of the Sundance, and well north of Casper. But I am interpreting this as a lousy pterosaur footprint (Pteraichnus) and two 'hand'prints. Now, I do claim to be quite skeptical of uncertain traces such as these, but if you sompare these with nice pterosaur tracks, they are quite similar, but less defined, so an undertrace or an infilling. The second problem with this is that the handprints are going the opposite direction than the footprint... Here are some better tracks from my friend Susan B's blog. You decide. I found no others in the area. I walked up and down this hill until... bones in concretion!!! Then more... pieces of concretion on the slope with bones in them. I spent an hour collecting as many as possible and found a few that fit together. I decided they were part of an icthyosaur snout. No teeth to be found, but I am told their teeth fallout pretty easily postmortem. Here is the scene with my backpack for scale. The rock to the left of my pack has a couple of pieces of ichthy snout on it... shown in the second photo. This was a good day indeed. At home I washed the pieces of concretion and did a bit of puzzle work. Here is my cat, Misha, supervising the drying of an ichthyosaur. There is about 15 inches of snout pieces that fit together. The pieces in the foreground fit together too, but I do not know what they are. And my take of belemnites and a few clams. Good Friday was a good day after indeed. I will return to this site after a few good rains a try to find the source of this concretion. jpc

I thought I would share these. My friend and regular collecting partner has an extensive fossil collection and I wanted to do something nice for him and his wife. Because he owns two ichthyosaurs skeletons and his wife is an ammonite fan I painted these two paintings for them. The ichthyosaur was based off of one of his specimens while the ammonite came from my own collection. I've painted wildlife before but hadn't painted in about five years.