Scientists discover 'dragon' hidden in museum

HANNOVER, Germany - German and British scientists have discovered the largest "sea dragon" on record after the specimen was originally unearthed some 20 years ago.

The specimen, originally discovered in the mid-1990s in Somerset, England, is estimated to be between 300 and 330 centimeters long and is the "largest unequivocal example" of the Ichthyosaurus family, according to a study published on Monday in the scientific journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.

Ichthyosaurs were a highly successful group of seagoing reptiles that became extinct about 90 million years ago. Often misidentified as swimming dinosaurs, these reptiles appeared before the first dinosaurs had evolved, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The specimen remained unstudied in the Lower Saxony State Museum in Hannover, Germany, until Sven Sachs, a paleontologist of Bielefeld Natural History Museum, first saw it during a routine visit last year.

Saches invited Dean Lomax, paleontologist and ichthyosaur expert from the University of Manchester, to study the fossil together.

After close examination of the fossil, they found that the creature was pregnant at the time of death, which makes it the third-known example on record of an Ichthyosaurus with an embryo.

"That's special," said Lomax in a news release. "This specimen provides new insights into the size range of the species, but also records only the third example of an Ichthyosaurus known with an embryo," he said.

Another intriguing discovery was that the specimen is a composite as almost the entire tail has been added to the rest of the skeleton and other parts are reconstructed.

"However, it was not 'put together' to represent a fake, but simply for a better display specimen," said Sachs.

According to the study, the estimated total length of the "sea dragon" is based on its skull and torso length.

Xinhua