more-inA near-complete Jurassic-era fossil of an intriguing animal that looks like a mashup of a dolphin and lizard, and lived during the twilight of the dinosaurs, has been unearthed in Kutch, Gujarat. While many ichthyosaur fossils have been found in North America and Europe, the fossil record in the Southern Hemisphere has mostly been limited to South America and Australia. Guntupalli Prasad, a geologist at the University of Delhi, said when a fossil bone from the animal’s skeleton was first found by an Indo-German research team in Kutch in 2016, they suspected it to be a dinosaur. Remnants were reported from Ariyalur, Tamil Nadu in 2016 but these were only fossils of teeth and part of the vertebra. In Kutch, the team reported the finding of vertebral column, ribs, neural spines and a part of the snout.

Source: The Hindu October 25, 2017 19:07 UTC