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?