The fossils were found in a U.S. museum.
The world's first complete skeleton of a prehistoric reptile was found over 200 years ago. The fossil was destroyed in an air raid in May 1941, but there were no copies of it.
There are two plaster casts in collections outside of the U.K. which have revealed new information about this important fossil. The casts were discovered by two people, one from the University of Manchester and another from the State University of New York.
The original paper on the discovery of this skeleton was published in 1819 in one of the Royal Society's journals.
Mary Anning, a pioneer in the field of paleontology, is most likely to have found the skeleton. An Ichthyosaur is a type of marine reptile that existed before the dinosaurs. These lizards looked like dolphins or sharks and appeared before the first dinosaurs.
The fossil was bought by a collector. Mary Anning and her family were struggling to pay rent when Thomas James Birch sold it to the Royal College of Surgeons.
At that time, people began to look at such finds in a more scientific way. The Ichthyosaur remains had been found before, but no one could tell you what they were. Sir Everard Home, a British surgeon, published his findings in the journal of The Royal Society in 1819 after studying this fossil, which was the most complete of its kind. The Royal College of Surgeons was hit by a bomb in 1941.
It was more than 20 years before the word "dinosaur" was invented. There was a lot of interest in collecting more of these strange creatures after this find. Paleontology was established due to the discoveries and research on Ichthyosaurs.
Dr. Lomax and Professor Massare have been working together for more than a decade and have made a number of important finds. The Ichthyosaurus anningae was named after Mary Anning.
In 2016 while researching in the collections of the Peabody Museum, Yale University, U.S., Lomax and Massare came across a very old cast of an Ichthyosaur, which they identified as the first complete Ichthyosaur skeleton. There was no record of any casts.
Prior to the Yale specimen being recognized as a cast of Home's Proteosaurus, the curatorial staff at the Peabody assumed that the specimen was a real fossil and not a plaster cast painted to look like the original fossil from which it was molded.
The Yale cast was purchased by Yale Professor Charles Schuchert as part of a large collection of fossils from the estate of Frederick A. Braun. According to Brinkman, "We don't know who made the cast or when nor do we know when Braun acquired it for his collection, though it must have been before his death in 1918."
The Natural History Museum in Berlin, Germany, was visited by Dr. Lomax in the year 2019. It's ironic that this one was in better shape than the cast at Yale since the original was destroyed during WWII.
The scientific head of collection of fossil reptiles at the Natural History Museum said he couldn't help Dr. Lomax because of missing records and labeling.
I was shocked when I learned that this important specimen's cast was in our collections for more than a century. In the end, there will always be someone who discovers the scientific value of the casted material in the natural history collection.
Both casts were made at different times, according to studies. The cast may have been made when Birch was still in possession of the animal.
He illustrated the original skeleton in Home. The only visual evidence we had was this drawing. We can compare the reliability of the original illustration with the casts. We found a few discrepancies between the drawing and the casts that Home missed.
The Royal Society played a major role in publishing the first accounts of ichthyosaurs in the scientific literature over 200 years ago.
The discovery of the two casts might encourage curators and researchers to take a closer look at old casts in museum collections.
The Royal Society Open Science has more information about the discovery of two casts of the Proteo-saurus. The DOI is 10.1098/rsos. 220966.
Journal information: Royal Society Open Science
All Rights Reserved © 2024
