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Ichthyosaur Fossil Site In Iraq


DD1991

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The discovery of the Early Cretaceous ichthyosaur Malawania surprised me because fossil discoveries in Iraq have long been hampered by the legacy of Saddam Hussein's tyranny and bloodshed in Iraq that was perpetrated by Al-Qaeda against the Shiites after the 2003 US invasion. Why's it taken so long for the palaeontological community to find an Early Cretaceous marine reptile in the Middle East even though it's known that Iraq was submerged beneath the Tethys Ocean in the Mesozoic? Would it be cost-effective for the Iraqi oil industry to search for marine reptiles in the Cretaceous strata in Iraq?

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being quite fond of my current arrangement of limbs, i don't think i'd feel too tempted to venture into iraq, flipping rocks...

Grüße,

Daniel A. Wöhr aus Südtexas

"To the motivated go the spoils."

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I think the time will come, but for now, the fossils will have to wait a bit longer.

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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The paper is:

Fischer, V., R. M. Appleby, D. Naish, J. Liston, J. B. Riding, S. Brindley,

and P. Godefroit, 2013, A basal thunnosaurian from Iraq reveals

disparate phylogenetic origins for Cretaceous ichthyosaurs. Biology

Letters. vol. 9, no. 4, article 20130021. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2013.0021

http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/9/4/20130021.short

The specimen was actually found back in during the 1950s by British

petroleum geologists. When they found this fossil, it was being used

as a stepping stone on a mule track. At that time, it was shipped back

to the United Kingdom to the Natural History Museum in London,

where it is curated and was eventually studied.

The details are discussed in "Malawania anachronus, an ichthyosaur

'out of time'," Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, at:

http://www.naturalsciences.be/active/sciencenews/malawania

Also, there is "How a new ichthyosaur from Iraq changes everything"

by Darren Naish, BBC News, at http://www.walkingwithdinosaurs.com/news/editorial/new-ichthyosaur-iraq-malawania-anachronous/1/

Yours,

Paul H.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Roger

I keep six honest serving-men (they taught me all I knew);Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who [Rudyard Kipling]

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  • 9 months later...

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