This article is more than 2 years old. Scientists say a teenager and her father discovered fossilized pieces of jawbone that belonged to an ichthyosaur, an ancient marine reptile. This particular ...

During the era of the dinosaurs on land, a group of prehistoric marine reptiles called ichthyosaurs lived in the oceans. Find out what fossils have revealed about these animals, which included the ...

A newly identified ichthyosaur from the UK’s Jurassic Coast is rewriting part of the prehistoric playbook. Nicknamed the “Sword Dragon of Dorset,” the three-meter-long marine reptile lived during a ...

A new study has uncovered evidence that a giant marine reptile from the Early Jurassic period used stealth to hunt its prey in deep or dark waters—much like owls on land today. The research, published ...

When fossil collector Paul De la Salle discovered pieces of a giant bone on Lilstock beach in Somerset in May 2016, he didn’t realise he had stumbled on a clue to a near 170-year-old mystery.

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American You’re reading a blog. This almost guarantees ...

About 240 million years ago, a massive marine reptile swallowed another, slightly less massive reptile and died shortly thereafter. The larger creature—a dolphin-like reptile known as an ...

A skeleton found on Britain's Jurassic Coast has been identified as a new species of ichthyosaur, a type of prehistoric marine reptile that once ruled the seas, scientists said Friday. A near-complete ...

A chance glance at a museum display has led to the first-ever discovery of an ichthyosaur fossil in western Japan, dating back around 220 million years. Initially mistaken for a common bivalve fossil, ...