A Jurassic Battle: Pliosaur vs Ichthyosaur

Publication Info:

Transcript:

Caleb M. Gordon et al, Punctured Vertebra Confirms Pliosaurid Predation on Ichthyosaurs with Implications for Thalassophonean Feeding Behavior in the Upper Jurassic of Europe, Bulletin of the Peabody Museum of Natural History (2026). DOI: 10.3374/014.067.0105

160 million years ago there was an epic battle between a Pliosaurus and an Ichthyosaur. The evidence of this fight has been labeled as "problematica" in Yale's collections for over 100 years, but brand new reasearch is finally bringing this groundbreaking specimen to light!

Episode 290

Notes:

This recently discovered Bone Wars era fossil is a perfect snapshot of a fight between two Jurassic giants. Here's your most recent paleontology news almost daily or whenever I get around to it. 160 million years ago ichthyosaurs ruled the seas and even if you don't know them by name, you have seen them. Animals like Ophthalmosaurus. And even though they look kind of like a dolphin or even a fish, they were a marine reptile and they evolved to fill a ton of different niches and they could be a ton of different sizes with the largest species getting up to almost as large as a modern blue whale. That said, they weren't alone and even though this was tens of millions of years before the first Mosasaur showed up, they did have to share the seas with Plesiosaurs. And I know when I say Plesiosaurs, you're probably picturing animals like Elasmosaurus. Tiny head, long neck, short tail. But not all Plesiosaurs looked like that cuz you had a group of Plesiosaurs called the Pliosaurs with giant robust heads. And these animals could get up to 40 ft long. Well, this fossil has been in Yale's Problematica collection for over 100 years since it was first put there by O.C. Marsh. Yes, that Marsh. Now, to be clear, he didn't find this fossil. It was literally his job at Yale to put it in the collection. That said, over 100 years ago the kind of records that were kept with fossils weren't exactly up to modern standards and a lot of the time were in cursive which is becoming more and more problematic. Well, paleontologists just rediscovered this fossil and it is obviously amazing. After months of advanced imaging and tracking down old labels and old information about this fossil, they finally know what it was. This is the centrum of an Ophthalmosaurus relative's vertebra. And yeah, ichthyosaur vertebrae not exactly rare, but this has a Pliosaur, specifically Pliosaur tooth pierced directly through the center. Not only showing paleontologists for a fact that Pliosaur was eating ichthyosaur, but that this interaction was violent enough that it separated the spinal column and got a tooth wedged into the middle of this bone. I'd say there are no signs of the animal healing, but do I really have to? As usual, if you want more information, here's the source.