Skye .- Scotland has its own prehistoric marine reptile, and no, we’re not talking about Nessie, the monster mythical Loch Ness.
The scientists announced the discovery of fossil remains of a giant reptile like a dolphin on the Scottish island of Skye who lived about 170 million years ago and was about 4.3 meters long.
The creature, dubbed Dearcmhara shawcrossi, a member of a group called ichthyosaurs who were among the dominant marine reptiles at the time of the dinosaurs.
The ichthyosaurs, some of which reached gigantic sizes that rivaled the largest whales today, lived for over 150 million years until they disappeared about 95 million years ago.
Dearcmhara, an ichthyosaur medium sized swimming in warm, shallow waters during the Jurassic Period, feeding on fish and squid. His remains are incomplete but the shape of a bone in his front flippers suggest it would have been an especially strong or fast swimmer, the researchers said.
“It’s of Scotland and is the first single Scottish marine reptile ever discovered and studied,” said paleontologist Steve Brusatte, University of Edinburgh, one of the researchers on the study published Monday in the journal Scottish Journal of Geology.
The amateur fossil hunter Brian Shawcross found the remains on a beach in the north of the Isle of Skye in 1959 and donated to the 1990s, scientists said. The term Dearcmhara Scottish Gaelic means “marine lizard”. The species name is in honor to Shawcross.
The discovery gives clues about the Jurassic period considered almost a black hole logs fossils of marine reptiles, Brusatte said. Scotland is one of the few places with fossils from that era.
Other fossils indicate that Dearcmhara lived with members of another branch of marine reptiles called plesiosaurs, known for their long necks and wings as paddles. The elusive Loch Ness monster is commonly depicted as a plesiosaur.
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