March 28, 2024

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Meet ‘Fiona’ a pregnant ichthyosaur, the oldest mother marine reptile in Chile

Meet 'Fiona' a pregnant ichthyosaur, the oldest mother marine reptile in Chile

In the shadow of a massive Patagonian glacier, paleontologists have made a rare fossil find: an ancient marine reptile that died during pregnancy. This dolphin-like creature, called an ichthyosaur, is the first of its kind to be discovered in Chile, recovered from a drill site near the Tyndale Glacier in a southern Patagonian glacier field.

“This site is really unique, because it records a time period in Earth history where we don’t have a very good fossil record of marine reptiles,” Erin Maxwell, an ichthyosaur specialist and curator of marine reptiles at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany who helped excavate the fossil, told Live Science.