After tens of millions of years, and then 1,500 hours of digging, paleontologists in India have unearthed the strikingly intact skeleton of an ichthyosaur, a marine reptile more than five meters long that resembled modern dolphins and whales.
The truly rare find, as the skeleton is the first from the Jurassic era to be found in India. Such fossils are more familiar farther north, paleontologists say, making the Indian skeleton a scientific marvel both for its level of preservation and surprising final resting place.
Indian paleontologists came across the skeleton south of the village of Lodai, located in India’s western Gujarat province, in 2016.
The bones were encased in dense, sedimentary rock and posed a brutal test for excavators working in a region where temperatures hit nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Those excavators were also tasked with maintaining the miraculous preservation of the skeleton. Prasad said that based on the patterns in the ichthyosaur’s teeth, the sea monster was a “top-tier predator that fed on hard and abrasive food material,” like mollusks, fish and even other marine reptiles.
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