This particular fossil hails from Berlin–Ichthyosaur State Park in central Nevada, a high desert landscape where sagebrush now whispers over ground that was once submerged beneath a warm, tropical Triassic sea.
During the Late Triassic, roughly 217 million years ago, this region lay along the western margin of the supercontinent Pangaea.
Shallow, nutrient-rich waters supported a thriving marine ecosystem dominated by ammonites, early fish, and ichthyosaurs.
Today, the Berlin–Ichthyosaur site is the richest concentration of large ichthyosaur fossils in North America.
More than 37 articulated or semi-articulated skeletons have been excavated from the Luning Formation, a thick sequence of limestone and shaly carbonates that records the rise and fall of this ancient seaway.
These rocks formed from fine carbonate mud and shell debris that settled on the sea floor, gradually entombing the bodies of these marine giants under quiet, low-oxygen conditions ideal for fossil preservation.
The site’s fossil beds preserve something even more scientifically tantalizing: multiple large individuals clustered together in a single stratigraphic horizon.
Whether these accumulations represent mass strandings, predator trap dynamics, toxic algal events, or a natural death assemblage remains debated.
Photo Credit: The talented hand model supporting this magnificent beast is Betty Franklin.
What you don’t see in the photo are the enormous grins we’re both wearing as we marvel over this beauty—hers because she gets to hold it, and mine because I get to capture the moment.
Thank you, Berlin-Ichthyosaur!
