Ghost' reptile lived late

摘要

The identification of a fossilized reptile indicates that extinct 'fish lizards' called ichthyosaurs were more diverse late in their history than is often thought. Previously, it was thought that only a subset of ichthyosaurs adapted for fast swimming in the open ocean had survived into the Cretaceous period, from 145 million to 66 million years ago. Valentin Fischer at the University of Liege in Belgium and his colleagues describe a new species with archaic features, Malawania anachronus, from a 1.5-metre-long fossil.