Fishing rod ‘selfie stick’ and scientific sleuthing turn up clues to extinct sea reptile

A Russian paleontologist browsing the Natural History Museum in London desperately required a very good appear at the skeleton of an extinct aquatic reptile, but its glass case was far too considerably up the wall. So he hooked up his electronic camera to a fishing rod and — with various clicks — snagged a massive a single, scientifically talking.

Photographs from the “selfie adhere” unveiled that the creature, whose bones were unearthed much more than a century ago on a coast in southern England, appeared very equivalent to a genus of ichthyosaurs he regarded from Russian collections.

He emailed the pictures of the dolphin-like ichthyosaur to fellow paleontologist Megan L. Jacobs, a Baylor College doctoral applicant in geosciences. She speedily realized that the animal’s skeletal structure matched not only some ichthyosaurs she was researching in a fossil museum on the English Channel coast, but also some somewhere else in the United Kingdom.

Jacobs and paleontologist Nikolay G. Zverkov of the Russian Academy of Sciences — who “fished” for the ichthyosaur — merged their research, researching their collective pictures and other elements and eventually identifying that the Russian and English ichthyosaurs were of the similar genus and considerably much more typical and prevalent than scientists considered.

Their examine is released in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Modern society.

“Ichthyosaurs swam the seas of our world for about seventy six million many years,” Jacobs explained. “But this five-foot ichthyosaur from some a hundred and fifty million many years ago was the minimum identified and considered to be amongst the rarest ichthyosaurs. The skeleton in the case, considered to be the only example of the genus, has been on exhibit in the Natural History Museum in London since 1922.

“Nikolay’s excellent specific pictures considerably extend information of Nannopterygius enthekiodon,” she explained. “Now, immediately after getting examples from museum collections across the United Kingdom, Russia and the Arctic — as perfectly as various other Nannopterygius species — we can say Nannopterygius is a single of the most prevalent genera of ichthyosaurs in the Northern Hemisphere.”

Moreover, the examine explained a new species, Nannopterygius borealis, relationship from about a hundred forty five million many years ago in a Russian archipelago in the Arctic. The new species is the northernmost and youngest agent of its type, Jacobs explained.

Formerly, for the Middle and Late Jurassic epochs, the only ample and most frequently observed ichthyosaur was Ophthalmosaurus, which experienced massive eyes and was about twenty toes extended. It was identified from hundreds of specimens, including perfectly-preserved skeletons from the Middle Jurassic Oxford Clay Development of England, Jacobs explained.

“For decades, the scientific local community considered that Nannopterygius was the rarest and most badly identified ichthyosaur of England,” Zverkov explained. “Ultimately, we can say that we know virtually each and every skeletal depth of these little ichthyosaurs and that these animals were prevalent. The reply was very shut what was required was just a fishing rod.”

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