Scientists and explorers always keep on discovering something new each and every day and keep bringing skeletons and fossils of many ancient animals in front of the world. In today's article, we will inform you about one such discovery made by scientists, whose name is "Ichthyosaur", colloquially referred to as “sea dragons. Ichthyosaurs were called sea dragons because they had huge teeth and eyes. This discovery also proved that dragons are not only a part of stories and movies but also exist in the real world. The word “Sea Dragon” generally refers to two extinct types of reptiles, ichthyosaurs, and plesiosaurs.
So now let's talk about how it was discovered, as this fossil was first discovered in February 2021 by Joe Davis, a conservation team leader at Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust, under a routine program at the Rutland Water Nature Reserve after a lagoon island was drained for landscaping. Before this, the first fossil of the reptile Sea dragon, a long-necked reptile called a plesiosaur, was discovered by Mary Anning in the early 19th century.
During this routine program, they noticed a strange shark-like figure on the ground which made them think that it was a fossil of a giant shark. But when they carefully examined the remains, it was so clear that it was not a shark fossil. Thus they brought a team of paleontologists to excavate the remains closely to study the history of the fossil. After excavation for several months, the results that came out of the investigation were quite astonishing. Because in the investigation it was revealed that this fossil doesn't belong to a shark but to 10 meters (more than 30 feet) long sea dragon that lived in the sea in the early Jurassic period, about 180 million years ago.
If to speak about its vastness, then this sea dragon looks like a dolphin and is 33 feet long and its skull weighs over a ton, making it the largest and most complete fossil ever discovered of that type in Britain. Dean R. Lomax, a paleontologist specializing in the study of ichthyosaurs, studied this sea creature, and said, 'even after many fossils of ichthyosaur have been discovered, it is remarkable because it is the largest skeleton found in Britain. He said, it is very rare to find fossils of such a creature in Britain, this suggests that at one time there must have been a huge sea in this place, in which this giant creature ruled.
According to scientists, Ichthyosaurs first came into existence about 250 million years ago and became extinct from the earth 90 million years ago. They were like dolphins in appearance and were present everywhere in England and the waters of the Atlantic seas.
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