HUNTER OF PANTHALASSAN SEAS: SHONISAURUS

Shonisaurus sikanni / Sikanni Chief River

More than 200 million years ago, when the supercontinent Pangaea was still knitting the world together, a leviathan moved through the warm Panthalassan seas that covered what is now northeastern British Columbia. 

Shonisaurus sikanniensis was colossal. At an estimated 21 metres (about 70 feet) in length, it rivals or exceeds the largest whales alive today. 

This was no scaly sea dragon but an ichthyosaur: a dolphin-shaped marine reptile with immense paddle-like limbs, a long, tapering snout, and eyes built for the dim light of deep water. 

Its vertebrae alone are the size of dinner plates. When it swam, it would have moved with powerful sweeps of its crescent tail, master of a Late Triassic ocean teeming with ammonites and early marine reptiles.

The type specimen of Shonisaurus sikanniensis was discovered along the banks of the Sikanni Chief River and painstakingly excavated over three ambitious field seasons led by Dr. Betsy Nicholls of the Royal Tyrrell Museum. 

A Rolex Laureate and one of Canada’s most respected vertebrate palaeontologists, Dr. Nicholls undertook what remains one of the most formidable fossil excavations ever attempted in this country. 

The animal lay entombed in limestone, and freeing it required extraordinary logistics, teamwork, and resolve over many field seasons.  

That immense skeleton — the largest marine reptile ever described — reshaped our understanding of just how big ichthyosaurs could become.

Many dedicated researchers have contributed to expanding the story of Shonisaurus and its kin. Scholars such as Dean Lomax and Sven Sachs, among others, continue to refine our understanding of ichthyosaur anatomy, growth patterns, and evolutionary relationships. 

Recent work on giant ichthyosaurs from the Triassic of Europe and North America suggests that extreme body size evolved rapidly after the end-Permian mass extinction. New discoveries of enormous jaw fragments and vertebrae hint that multiple lineages independently pushed the limits of marine reptile gigantism. 

These animals were likely deep-diving specialists, feeding on abundant soft-bodied cephalopods and fish, filling ecological roles that whales would not occupy for another 150 million years.

The Sikanni Chief River flows through the traditional territory of the Kaska Dena, whose stewardship of these lands spans countless generations. Any scientific work in this region exists within that broader and much older human story, and it is important to acknowledge the enduring relationship between the land, the river, and the people who know it best.

Today, the bones of Shonisaurus sikanniensis rest in Alberta, but its story stretches far beyond a museum gallery. It is a tale of deep time, bold fieldwork, collaboration across continents, and the simple human wonder that arises when we uncover something vast and ancient from stone. 

From the warm Triassic seas to the careful hands of modern researchers, the story of Shonisaurus reminds us that our planet has always been capable of producing giants — and that with patience, teamwork, and curiosity, we can bring their stories joyfully back into the light.

TEMNODONTOSAURUS CRASSIMANUS

Temnodontosaurus crassimanus

Meet Temnodontosaurus crassimanus — the sea monster that looked like someone asked nature to weld a dolphin to a speed-boat and then crank the dial to “chaos.” 

This big Jurassic unit was patrolling the ancient oceans some 180 million years ago, back when Britain was less tea-and-crumpets and more sharks, ammonites, and unsupervised evolutionary experimentation.

Our lad here carries a rather posh pedigree. Temnodontosaurus crassimanus was first named by none other than Sir Richard “Coined-the-Word-Dinosaur” Owen — the Victorian gentleman naturalist, master of self-promotion, and inaugural superintendent of what would become the Natural History Museum in London. 

Owen had a long habit of tussling with ideas and people (poor Darwin), but to his credit, the man knew a good fossil when he saw one. And this brute was a standout.

Fast-forward a century and a bit and the ever-industrious Dean Lomax (palaeontologist, author, and Yorkshire’s own fossil whisperer) rolled up to study this celebrity specimen as part of his research leading into his PhD. When future palaeontologists write the social history of ichthyosaur fandom, Lomax will certainly get his own chapter. He's a boy about town in a vocation filled with dusty fossil filled cases and muddy field work.

So, is Temnodontosaurus crassimanus a big deal? Yeppers. The Yorkshire specimen isn’t just a Temnodontosaurus. He’s the Temnodontosaurus. The Type Specimen. The gold standard. The reference fossil. The one all wannabes must measure up to before they earn the name. If ichthyosaur taxonomy were a Regency romance, this fellow is the Duke of Diagnostic Features. Everyone else gets compared to him.

He lives today in respectable comfort at the Yorkshire Museum, a stately resident amid ammonites, plesiosaurs, and other Jurassic goodies. 

But his road to fame was… inelegant.

Back in 1857, workmen quarrying alum shale near Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast started turning up chunks of gigantic reptile bones. No one blinked an eye at digging giant holes into cliffs (Victorian industry was chaos incarnate), but thirty-foot prehistoric reptiles were another matter. 

Word got passed up the chain of command, and eventually Sir Richard Owen himself was summoned, presumably with much whisker-stroking and Latin.

Recovering the fossil was a scene straight out of an industrial novel. More than fifty slabs. Massive shale blocks. Quarry operations thundering around. Men shouting. Someone trying not to drop a vertebra the size of a teapot. 

All while alum production hummed away — an industry that had made Yorkshire indispensable to the textile world since the 1500s. Synthetic chemistry ultimately doomed the trade; by the 1860s it was sputtering, and by 1871 it was gone entirely. But in those twilight years, the alum quarries gifted paleontology an eight-metre aquatic missile — one of the largest ichthyosaurs ever discovered in the UK.

Not a bad parting present, really.

Today we look at Temnodontosaurus and think sleek marine super-predator — a creature built for speed, crushing jaws, and a diet that likely included belemnites, fish, and anything else foolish enough to loom into view. 

But in the early 1800s, these beasts were still rewriting natural history. Mary Anning’s discoveries at Lyme Regis had upended old ideas, and ichthyosaurs became one of the first fossil groups to teach Victorian Britain that extinction was real and the Earth had been home to worlds utterly unlike our own.

So, should you happen by the museum to take a gander at that big Yorkshire slab of Jurassic muscle, give him a little nod. He survived catastrophic oceans, industrial quarrying, and the politics of Victorian science — and still looks fabulous for it.

Paleo-coordinates: 54.5° N, 0.6° W: paleocoordinates 42.4° N, 9.3° E

MIDDLE TRIASSIC MIXOSAURUS: TAIWAN STYLE

Mixosaurus sp. from Middle Triassic Seas

If you ever wanted to meet an ichthyosaur halfway between “sleek dolphin missile” and “awkward crocodile-fish,” Mixosaurus delivers. 

This extinct marine reptile cruised the Middle Triassic seas around 242–235 million years ago, back when the world’s continents were still shuffling seats and experimenting with new ocean ecosystems.

The Taiwan specimen of Mixosaurus sp. on display at the Natural History Branch of the National Taiwan Museum captures that transitional vibe perfectly. It is a very, very purdy specimen!

With an elongated snout, well-developed fins, and a body still figuring out hydrodynamic fashion, Mixosaurus sits smack in the ichthyosaur family tree between early, lizard-shaped forms and the more streamlined torpedo models that would show up in the Jurassic. 

Think of it as the “adolescent ichthyosaur phase,” complete with growth spurts and evolving lifestyles.

Taxonomically, Mixosaurus belongs to the order Ichthyosauria and is commonly grouped within Mixosauridae. Its relatives include the earlier Utatsusaurus and Grippia (more on the reptilian side of things) and later speed demons like Temnodontosaurus and Stenopterygius. 

While all ichthyosaurs shared adaptations for marine life — big eyes, paddle limbs, and that delightful habit of birthing live young — Mixosaurus kept a few primitive traits, making it a favorite for paleontologists trying to reconstruct evolutionary pathways in Triassic oceans.

As for its museum home: the National Taiwan Museum has a long pedigree. Founded in 1908 during the Japanese era, it’s the oldest museum in Taiwan and houses natural history, anthropology, geology, and zoology collections spanning deep time to present day. 

The Natural History Branch, nestled in a dedicated exhibition space, is where geology, paleontology, and biology truly shine — a quiet refuge where extinct reptiles like Mixosaurus can enjoy their retirement in glass cases while humans politely stare, point, and whisper variants of “whoa.”

If you’re lucky enough to visit, you’ll find Mixosaurus presented not as some dusty relic of a bygone sea, but as a charismatic stepping-stone in reptile evolution — a reminder that even in the Triassic, life was busy experimenting. 

And occasionally, those experiments worked so well they became crowd-pleasers 240 million years later.

The National Taiwan Museum is in Taipei, Taiwan, right in the city’s historic downtown. The main building sits along Xiànběi Road (Xiànběi Rd., Zhongzheng District) facing 228 Peace Memorial Park, making it easy to combine extinct reptiles with a lovely urban stroll.

The Natural History Branch — where the Mixosaurus hangs out — is part of the same museum system and also located in central Taipei. It focuses on geology, biology, and deep time, so it’s very fossil-friendly territory.

If you’re ever in Taipei (or plotting a paleontology-tour itinerary — which, honestly, is something you should do), it’s a fun stop: compact, historic, and just nerdy enough to make Triassic ichthyosaurs feel right at home.

MASSIVE ICHTHYOSAUR VERTEBRAE FROM NEVADA

The massive marine reptile vertebra you see here—broad, five-sided, drum-shaped, and heavy enough to require two hands to lift—once belonged to an ichthyosaur, one of the most impressive lineages of marine reptiles ever to patrol Earth’s oceans. 

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!

MARINE PREDATOR OF THE DEEP: BLUE LIAS ICHTHYOSAUR

Ichthyosaur Vertebrae found by Lewis Winchester-Ellis

This well-preserved partial ichthyosaur was found in the Blue Lias shales by Lewis Winchester-Ellis. 

The vertebrae you see in the image here are from the tail section of this marine reptile.

The find includes stomach contents which tell us a little about how this particular fellow liked to dine.

As with most of his brethren, he enjoyed fish and cephalopods. Lewis found fishbone and squid tentacle hooklets in his belly. 

Oh yes, these ancient cephies had grasping hooklets on their tentacles. I'm picturing them wiggling all ominously. The hooklets were the only hard parts of the animal preserved in this case as the softer parts of this ancient calamari were fully or partially digested before this ichthyosaur met his end.

Ichthyosaurus was an extinct marine reptile first described from fossil fragments found in 1699 in Wales. Shortly thereafter, fossil vertebrae were published in 1708 from the Lower Jurassic and the first member of the order Ichthyosauria to be discovered.

To give that a bit of historical significance, this was the age of James Stuart, Jacobite hopeful to the British throne. While scientific journals of the day were publishing the first vertebrae ichthyosaur finds, he was avoiding the French fleet in the Firth of Forth off Scotland. This wasn’t Bonnie Prince Charlie, this was his Dad. Yes, that far back.

The first complete skeleton was discovered in the early 19th century by Mary Anning and her brother Joseph along the Dorset Jurassic Coast. Joseph had mistakenly, but quite reasonably, taken the find for an ancient crocodile. Mary excavated the specimen a year later and it was this and others that she found that would supply the research base others would soon publish on.

Mary's find was described by a British surgeon, Sir Everard Home, an elected Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1814. The specimen is now on display at the Natural History Museum in London bearing the name Temnodontosaurus platyodon, or “cutting-tooth lizard.”

Ichthyosaurus communis

In 1821, William Conybeare and Henry De La Beche, a friend of Mary's, published a paper describing three new species of unknown marine reptiles based on the Anning's finds.

Rev. William Buckland would go on to describe two small ichthyosaurs from the Lias of Lyme Regis, Ichthyosaurus communis and Ichthyosaurus intermedius, in 1837.

Remarkable, you'll recall that he was a theologian, geologist, palaeontologist AND Dean of Westminster. 

It was Buckland who published the first full account of a dinosaur in 1824, coining the name, "Megalosaurus."

The Age of Dinosaurs and Era of the Mighty Marine Reptile had begun.

Ichthyosaurs have been collected in the Blue Lias near Lyme Regis and the Black Ven Marls. More recently, specimens have been collected from the higher succession near Seatown. Paddy Howe, Lyme Regis Museum geologist, found a rather nice Ichthyosaurus breviceps skull a few years back. A landslip in 2008 unveiled some ribs poking out of the Church cliffs and a bit of digging revealed the ninth fossil skull ever found of a breviceps, with teeth and paddles to boot.

Specimens have since been found in Europe in Belgium, England, Germany, Switzerland and in Indonesia. Many tremendously well-preserved specimens come from the limestone quarries in Holzmaden, southern Germany.

Ichthyosaurs ranged from quite small, just a foot or two, to well over twenty-six metres in length and resembled both modern fish and dolphins.

Dean Lomax and Sven Sachs, both active (and delightful) vertebrate paleontologists, have described a colossal beast, Shonisaurus sikanniensis from the Upper Triassic (Norian) Pardonet Formation of northeastern British Columbia, Canada, measuring 3-3.5 meters in length. The specimen is now on display in the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta, Canada. It was this discovery that tipped the balance in the vote, making it British Columbia's Official Fossil. Ichthyosaurs have been found at other sites in British Columbia, on Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii) but Shoni tipped the ballot.

The first specimens of Shonisaurus were found in the 1990s by Peter Langham at Doniford Bay on the Somerset coast of England.

Dr. Betsy Nicholls, Rolex Laureate Vertebrate Palaeontologist from the Royal Tyrrell Museum, excavated the type specimen of Shonisaurus sikanniensis over three field sessions in one of the most ambitious fossil excavations ever ventured. Her efforts from 1999 through 2001, both in the field and lobbying back at home, paid off. Betsy published on this new species in 2004, the culmination of her life’s work and her last paper as we lost her to cancer in autumn of that year.

Roy Chapman Andrews, AMNH 1928 Expedition to the Gobi Desert

Charmingly, Betsy had a mail correspondence with Roy Chapman Andrews, former director of the American Museum of Natural History, going back to the late 1950s as she explored her potential career in palaeontology. 

Do you recall the AMNH’s sexy paleo photos of expeditions to the Gobi Desert in southern Mongolia in China in the early 20th century? I've posted a picture here to jog your memory. Roy Chapman Andrews was the lead on that trip. The man was dead sexy. His photos are what fueled the flames of my own interest in paleo.

We've found at least 37 specimens of Shonisaurus in Triassic outcrops of the Luning Formation in the Shoshone Mountains of Nevada, USA. The finds go back to the 1920s. The specimens that may it to publication were collected by M. Wheat and C. L. Camp in the 1950s.  The aptly named Shonisaurus popularis became the Nevada State Fossil in 1984. Our Shoni got around. Isolated remains have been found in a section of sandstone in Belluno, in the Eastern Dolomites, Veneto region of northeastern Italy. The specimens were published by Vecchia et al. in 2002.

For a time, Shonisaurus was the largest ichthyosaurus known.

Move over, Shoni, as a new marine reptile find competes with the Green Anaconda (Eunectes murinus) and the Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus) for size at a whopping twenty-six (26) metres.

The find is the prize of fossil collector turned co-author, Paul de la Salle, who (you guessed it) found it in the lower part of the intertidal area that outcrops strata from the latest Triassic Westbury Mudstone Formation of Lilstock on the Somerset coast. He contacted Dean Lomax and Judy Massare who became co-authors on the paper.

The find and conclusions from their paper put "dinosaur" bones from the historic Westbury Mudstone Formation of Aust Cliff, Gloucestershire, UK site into full reinterpretation.

And remember that ichthyosaur the good Reverend Buckland described back in 1837, the Ichthyosaurus communis? Dean Lomax was the first to describe a wee baby. A wee baby ichthyosaur! Awe. I know, right? He and paleontologist Nigel Larkin published this adorable first in the journal of Historical Biology in 2017.

They had teamed up previously on another first back in 2014 when they completed the reconstruction of an entire large marine reptile skull and mandible in 3-D, then graciously making it available to fellow researchers and the public. 

The skull and braincase in question were from an Early Jurassic, and relatively rare, Protoichthyosaurus prostaxalis. The specimen had been unearthed in Warwickshire back in the 1950s. Unlike most ichthyosaur finds of this age, it was not compressed and allowed the team to look at a 3-D specimen through the lens of computerized tomography (CT) scanning.

Another superb 3-D ichthyosaur skull was found near Lyme Regis by fossil hunter-turned-entrepreneur-local David Sole and prepped by the late David Costain. I'm rather hoping it went into a museum collection as it would be wonderful to see the specimen studied, imaged, scanned and 3-D printed for all to share. Here's hoping.

Ichthyosaurus somersetensis Credit: Dean R Lomax

Lomax and Sven Sachs also published on an embryo from one of the largest ichthyosaurs known, a new species named Ichthyosaurus somersetensis.

Their paper in the ACTA Palaeontologica Polonica from 2017, describes the third embryo known for Ichthyosaurus and the first to be positively identified to species level. The specimen was collected from Lower Jurassic strata (lower Hettangian, Blue Lias Formation) of Doniford Bay, Somerset, UK and is housed in the collection of the Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum (Lower Saxony State Museum) in Hannover, Germany.

We have learned a lot about them in the time we've been studying them. We now have thousands of specimens, some whole, some as bits and pieces. Many specimens that have been collected are only just now being studied and the tools we are using to study them are getting better and better.

Link to Lomax Paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article…

Link to Nathan's Paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/…/10.1080/03115518.2018.1523462…

Nicholls Paper: E. L. Nicholls and M. Manabe. 2004. Giant ichthyosaurs of the Triassic - a new species of Shonisaurus from the Pardonet Formation (Norian: Late Triassic) of British Columbia. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 24(4):838-849 [M. Carrano/H. Street]

BERLIN-ICHTHYSAUR STATE PARK, NEVADA

Time Slows at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park

High on the hillside up a long entry road sits the entrance to Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in central Nevada.

A worn American flag and sun bleached outbuildings greet you on your way to the outcrops. Away from the hustle and bustle that define the rest of Nevada this place feels remarkably serene. Your eyes squint against the sun as you search for ammonoids and other marine fossil fauna while your nose tends to the assault from the bracing smell of sage brush.

This site holds many stories. The interpretive centre displays wonderful marine reptiles, ichthyosaurs in situ, as you might expect from the name of the park — but it also showcases years of history lovingly tended. This stretch of dry golden low hills dappled with the yellow of creosote and desert grasses is an important locality for our understanding of the Carnian-Norian boundary (CNB) in North America.

The area is known worldwide as one of the most important ichthyosaur Fossil-Lagerstätte because of the sheer volume of remarkably well-preserved, fully articulated (all the sweet bones laid out all in a row...) specimens of Shonisaurus popularis.

Rich ammonoid faunas outcrop in the barren hills of the Upper Triassic (Early Norian, Kerri zone), Luning Formation, West Union Canyon, Nevada. They were studied by N. J. Silberling (1959) and provide support for the definition of the Schucherti and Macrolobatus zones of the latest Carnian — which are here overlain by well-preserved faunas of the earliest Norian Kerri Zone. 

The genus Gonionotites, very common in the Tethys and British Columbia, is for the moment, unknown in Nevada. The Upper Carnian faunas are dominated by Tropitidae, while Juvavitidae are conspicuously lacking. 

Middle Triassic Ammonoids

Despite its importance, no further investigations had been done at this site for a good 50 years. That changed in 2010 when Jim Haggart, Mike Orchard and Paul Smith — all local Vancouverites — collaborated on a project that took them down to Nevada to look at the conodonts and ammonoids. They did a bed-by-bed sampling of ammonoids and conodonts in West Union Canyon during October of that year.

October is an ideal time to do fieldwork in this area. There are a few good weeks between screaming hot and frigid cold. It is also tarantula breeding season so keep your eyes peeled. Those sweet little burrows you see are not from rodents but rather largish arachnids. 

The eastern side of the canyon provides the best record of the Macrolobatus Zone, which is represented by several beds yielding ammonoids of the Tropites group, together with Anatropites div. sp. 

Conodont faunas from both these and higher beds are dominated by ornate metapolygnthids that would formerly have been collectively referred to Metapolygnathus primitius, a species long known to straddle the CNB. Within this lower part of the section, they resemble forms that have been separated as Metapolygnathus mersinensis. Slightly higher, forms close to Epigondolella' orchardi and a single Orchardella n. sp. occur. This association can be correlated with the latest Carnian in British Columbia.

Higher in the section, the ammonoid fauna shows a sudden change and is dominated by Tropithisbites. Few tens of metres above, but slightly below the first occurrence of Norian ammonoids Guembelites jandianus and Stikinoceras, two new species of conodonts (Gen et sp. nov. A and B) appear that also occur close to the favoured Carnian/Norian boundary at Black Bear Ridge, British Columbia. Stratigraphically higher collections continue to be dominated by forms close to M. mersinensis and E. orchardi after BC's own Mike Orchard.

The best exposure of the Kerri Zone is on the western side of the West Union Canyon. Ammonoids, dominated by Guembelites and Stikinoceras div. sp., have been collected from several fossil-bearing levels. Conodont faunas replicate those of the east section. The collected ammonoids fit perfectly well with the faunas described by Silberling in 1959, but they differ somewhat from coeval faunas of the Tethys and Canada. 

The ammonoid fauna paints a compelling picture of Tethyan influence with a series of smoking guns. We see an abundance of Tropitidae in the Carnian, a lack of Pterosirenites in the Norian, copious Guembelites, the Tethyan species G. philostrati, the stratigraphic position of G. clavatus and the rare occurrence of Gonionotites. Their hallelujah moment was likely finding an undescribed species of the thin-shelled bivalve Halobia similar to Halobia beyrichi — the clincher that perhaps seals this deal on Tethyan influence. 

I'll take a boo to see what Christopher McRoberts published on the find. A jolly good idea to have him on this expedition as it would have been easy to overlook if the focus remained solely on the conodonts and ammonoids. McRoberts has published on the much-studied Pardonet Formation up in the Willison Lake Area of Northeastern, British Columbia. He knows a thing or two about Upper Triassic Bivalvia and the correlation to coeval faunas elsewhere in the North American Cordillera, and to the Boreal, Panthalassan and Tethyan faunal realms. 

If you fancy a read, they published a paper: "Towards the definition of the Carnian/Norian Boundary: New data on Ammonoids and Conodonts from central Nevada," which you can find in the proceedings of the 21st Canadian Paleontology Conference; by Haggart, J W (ed.); Smith, P L (ed.); Canadian Paleontology Conference Proceedings no. 9, 2011 p. 9-10.

Fig. 1. Location map of Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park

Marco Balini, James Jenks, Riccardo Martin, Christopher McRoberts, along with Mike Orchard and Norman Siberling, did a bed by bed sampling in 2013 and published on The Carnian/Norian boundary succession at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park (Upper Triassic, central Nevada, USA) and published in January 2014 in Paläontologische Zeitschrift 89:399–433. That work is available for download from ResearchGate. The original is in German, but there is a translation available.

After years of reading about the correlation between British Columbia and Nevada, I had the very great pleasure of walking through these same sections in October 2019 with members of the Vancouver Paleontological Society and Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society. It was with that same crew that I'd originally explored fossil sites in the Canadian Rockies in the early 2000s. Those early trips led to paper after paper and the exciting revelations that inspired our Nevada adventure.

If you plan your own adventure, you'll want to keep an eye out for some of the other modern fauna — mountain lions, snakes, lizards, scorpions, wolves, coyotes, foxes, ground squirrels, rabbits, falcons, hawks, eagles, bobcats, sheep, deer and pronghorns.

Figure One: Location map of Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. A detailed road log with access information for this locality is provided in Lucas et al. (2007).

ANCIENT SEA MONSTERS: ICHTHYOSAURS AND MOSASAURS

When we think of prehistoric creatures, dinosaurs usually steal the spotlight. But beneath the ancient waves swam giants just as awe-inspiring—and sometimes even more terrifying. 

Among these marine reptiles, two groups stand out: ichthyosaurs and mosasaurs. Though they never coexisted, both ruled the oceans in their own time and in their own terrifying ways.

Ichthyosaurs: Dolphin-Like Reptiles of the Jurassic

Ichthyosaurs (meaning "fish lizards") were sleek, fast swimmers that first appeared around 250 million years ago during the Triassic. 

Their streamlined bodies, long snouts, and large eyes gave them an appearance eerily similar to modern dolphins—though they weren’t mammals. This resemblance is a perfect example of convergent evolution, where unrelated animals develop similar traits to adapt to similar environments.

Some ichthyosaurs grew as long as a school bus, and their enormous eyes (some as large as dinner plates) suggest they were capable of deep-sea hunting. They fed on fish, squid, and other marine life, and some species likely gave birth to live young—a rare trait among reptiles.

They thrived for millions of years but began to decline in the mid-Cretaceous, eventually going extinct before the rise of mosasaurs.

Mosasaurs: Apex Predators of the Cretaceous Seas

Enter the mosasaurs, who rose to dominance after the ichthyosaurs were gone. Mosasaurs appeared around 98 million years ago and ruled the oceans until the mass extinction event 66 million years ago that also wiped out the dinosaurs.

These were true marine lizards, closely related to today’s monitor lizards and snakes. Picture a massive, crocodile-headed Komodo dragon with flippers and a shark-like tail—and you’ll have a good image of a mosasaur. Some species grew over 50 feet long, and their jaws were packed with conical, backward-curving teeth perfect for gripping slippery prey.

Mosasaurs were apex predators, eating anything they could catch—fish, turtles, birds, and even other mosasaurs. Their double-jointed jaws could open wide, allowing them to swallow large prey whole.

Who Would Win in a Fight?

While it’s fun to imagine a battle between an ichthyosaur and a mosasaur, it never could have happened—ichthyosaurs were long extinct by the time mosasaurs evolved. That said, mosasaurs were more heavily built and had powerful jaws, making them formidable hunters. Ichthyosaurs were faster and more agile, more suited to quick chases than brute force.

Legacy Beneath the Waves

Both ichthyosaurs and mosasaurs left behind rich fossil records, giving scientists insight into how reptiles adapted to life in the oceans. Their bones have been found on every continent, including Antarctica, reminding us that the ancient oceans were just as dynamic and dangerous as today’s wildest habitats.

Next time you watch a documentary about dinosaurs or visit a natural history museum, take a moment to appreciate the marine reptiles that once ruled the seas. After all, the land wasn't the only place where prehistoric giants thrived.

BLUE LIAS ICHTHYOSAUR

This well-preserved partial ichthyosaur was found in the Blue Lias shales by Lewis Winchester-Ellis. The vertebrae you see here are from the tail section of this marine reptile.

The find includes stomach contents which tell us a little about how this particular fellow liked to dine.

As with most of his brethren, he enjoyed fish and cephalopods. Lewis found fishbone and squid tentacle hooklets in his belly. 

Oh yes, these ancient cephies had grasping hooklets on their tentacles. I'm picturing them wiggling all ominously. The hooklets were the only hard parts of the animal preserved in this case as the softer parts of this ancient calamari were fully or partially digested before this ichthyosaur met his end.

Ichthyosaurus was an extinct marine reptile first described from fossil fragments found in 1699 in Wales. Shortly thereafter, fossil vertebrae were published in 1708 from the Lower Jurassic and the first member of the order Ichthyosauria to be discovered.

To give that a bit of historical significance, this was the age of James Stuart, Jacobite hopeful to the British throne. While scientific journals of the day were publishing the first vertebrae ichthyosaur finds, he was avoiding the French fleet in the Firth of Forth off Scotland. This wasn’t Bonnie Prince Charlie, this was his Dad. Yes, that far back.

The first complete skeleton was discovered in the early 19th century by Mary Anning and her brother Joseph along the Dorset Jurassic Coast. Joseph had mistakenly, but quite reasonably, taken the find for an ancient crocodile. Mary excavated the specimen a year later and it was this and others that she found that would supply the research base others would soon publish on.

Mary's find was described by a British surgeon, Sir Everard Home, an elected Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1814. The specimen is now on display at the Natural History Museum in London bearing the name Temnodontosaurus platyodon, or “cutting-tooth lizard.”

Ichthyosaurus communis

In 1821, William Conybeare and Henry De La Beche, a friend of Mary's, published a paper describing three new species of unknown marine reptiles based on the Anning's finds.

Rev. William Buckland would go on to describe two small ichthyosaurs from the Lias of Lyme Regis, Ichthyosaurus communis and Ichthyosaurus intermedius, in 1837.

Remarkable, you'll recall that he was a theologian, geologist, palaeontologist AND Dean of Westminster. It was Buckland who published the first full account of a dinosaur in 1824, coining the name, "Megalosaurus."

The Age of Dinosaurs and Era of the Mighty Marine Reptile had begun.

Ichthyosaurs have been collected in the Blue Lias near Lyme Regis and the Black Ven Marls. More recently, specimens have been collected from the higher succession near Seatown. Paddy Howe, Lyme Regis Museum geologist, found a rather nice Ichthyosaurus breviceps skull a few years back. A landslip in 2008 unveiled some ribs poking out of the Church cliffs and a bit of digging revealed the ninth fossil skull ever found of a breviceps, with teeth and paddles to boot.

Specimens have since been found in Europe in Belgium, England, Germany, Switzerland and in Indonesia. Many tremendously well-preserved specimens come from the limestone quarries in Holzmaden, southern Germany.

Ichthyosaurs ranged from quite small, just a foot or two, to well over twenty-six metres in length and resembled both modern fish and dolphins.

Dean Lomax and Sven Sachs, both active (and delightful) vertebrate paleontologists, have described a colossal beast, Shonisaurus sikanniensis from the Upper Triassic (Norian) Pardonet Formation of northeastern British Columbia, Canada, measuring 3-3.5 meters in length. The specimen is now on display in the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta, Canada. It was this discovery that tipped the balance in the vote, making it British Columbia's Official Fossil. Ichthyosaurs have been found at other sites in British Columbia, on Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii) but Shoni tipped the ballot.

The first specimens of Shonisaurus were found in the 1990s by Peter Langham at Doniford Bay on the Somerset coast of England.

Dr. Betsy Nicholls, Rolex Laureate Vertebrate Palaeontologist from the Royal Tyrrell Museum, excavated the type specimen of Shonisaurus sikanniensis over three field sessions in one of the most ambitious fossil excavations ever ventured. Her efforts from 1999 through 2001, both in the field and lobbying back at home, paid off. Betsy published on this new species in 2004, the culmination of her life’s work and her last paper as we lost her to cancer in autumn of that year.

Roy Chapman Andrews, AMNH 1928 Expedition to the Gobi Desert

Charmingly, Betsy had a mail correspondence with Roy Chapman Andrews, former director of the American Museum of Natural History, going back to the late 1950s as she explored her potential career in palaeontology. Do you recall the AMNH’s sexy paleo photos of expeditions to the Gobi Desert in southern Mongolia in China in the early 20th century? I've posted a picture here to jog your memory. Roy Chapman Andrews was the lead on that trip. The man was dead sexy. His photos are what fueled the flames of my own interest in paleo.

We've found at least 37 specimens of Shonisaurus in Triassic outcrops of the Luning Formation in the Shoshone Mountains of Nevada, USA. The finds go back to the 1920s. The specimens that may it to publication were collected by M. Wheat and C. L. Camp in the 1950s.  The aptly named Shonisaurus popularis became the Nevada State Fossil in 1984. Our Shoni got around. Isolated remains have been found in a section of sandstone in Belluno, in the Eastern Dolomites, Veneto region of northeastern Italy. The specimens were published by Vecchia et al. in 2002.

For a time, Shonisaurus was the largest ichthyosaurus known.

Move over, Shoni, as a new marine reptile find competes with the Green Anaconda (Eunectes murinus) and the Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus) for size at a whopping twenty-six (26) metres.

The find is the prize of fossil collector turned co-author, Paul de la Salle, who (you guessed it) found it in the lower part of the intertidal area that outcrops strata from the latest Triassic Westbury Mudstone Formation of Lilstock on the Somerset coast. He contacted Dean Lomax and Judy Massare who became co-authors on the paper.

The find and conclusions from their paper put "dinosaur" bones from the historic Westbury Mudstone Formation of Aust Cliff, Gloucestershire, UK site into full reinterpretation.

And remember that ichthyosaur the good Reverend Buckland described back in 1837, the Ichthyosaurus communis? Dean Lomax was the first to describe a wee baby. A wee baby ichthyosaur! Awe. I know, right? He and paleontologist Nigel Larkin published this adorable first in the journal of Historical Biology in 2017.

They had teamed up previously on another first back in 2014 when they completed the reconstruction of an entire large marine reptile skull and mandible in 3-D, then graciously making it available to fellow researchers and the public. The skull and braincase in question were from an Early Jurassic, and relatively rare, Protoichthyosaurus prostaxalis. The specimen had been unearthed in Warwickshire back in the 1950s. Unlike most ichthyosaur finds of this age, it was not compressed and allowed the team to look at a 3-D specimen through the lens of computerized tomography (CT) scanning.

Another superb 3-D ichthyosaur skull was found near Lyme Regis by fossil hunter-turned-entrepreneur-local David Sole and prepped by the late David Costain. I'm rather hoping it went into a museum collection as it would be wonderful to see the specimen studied, imaged, scanned and 3-D printed for all to share. Here's hoping.

Ichthyosaurus somersetensis Credit: Dean R Lomax

Lomax and Sven Sachs also published on an embryo from one of the largest ichthyosaurs known, a new species named Ichthyosaurus somersetensis.

Their paper in the ACTA Palaeontologica Polonica from 2017, describes the third embryo known for Ichthyosaurus and the first to be positively identified to species level. The specimen was collected from Lower Jurassic strata (lower Hettangian, Blue Lias Formation) of Doniford Bay, Somerset, UK and is housed in the collection of the Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum (Lower Saxony State Museum) in Hannover, Germany.

We have learned a lot about them in the time we've been studying them. We now have thousands of specimens, some whole, some as bits and pieces. Many specimens that have been collected are only just now being studied and the tools we are using to study them are getting better and better.

Link to Lomax Paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article…

Link to Nathan's Paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/…/10.1080/03115518.2018.1523462…

Nicholls Paper: E. L. Nicholls and M. Manabe. 2004. Giant ichthyosaurs of the Triassic - a new species of Shonisaurus from the Pardonet Formation (Norian: Late Triassic) of British Columbia. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 24(4):838-849 [M. Carrano/H. Street]

SHONISAURUS OF NEVADA

The beauties you see here are ichthyosaurs. The largest of their lineage is the genus Shonisaurus who ruled our ancient seas 217 million years ago.

At least 37 incomplete fossil specimens of the marine reptile have been found in hard limestone deposits of the Luning Formation, in far northwestern Nye County of Nevada. This formation dates to the late Carnian age of the late Triassic period when present-day Nevada and parts of the western United States were covered by an ancient ocean.

The first researcher to recognize the Nevada fossil specimens as ichthyosaurs was Siemon W. Muller of Stanford University. He had the work of Sir Richard Owen and others to build on. That being said, there are very few contenders for a species that boasts vertebrae over a foot wide and weighing in at almost 10 kg or 21 lbs. Muller contacted the University of California Museum of Paleontology at Berkeley. Surface collecting by locals continued at the site but no major excavation was planned.

Sir Richard Owen, the British biologist, comparative anatomist and paleontologist, coined the name ichthyopterygia, or "fish flippers," one hundred and fourteen years earlier, but that wee bit of scientific knowledge hadn't made its way west to the general population. The finds at Luning were still, "marine monsters."

Owen, too, was building on research going back to 1699, the very first recorded fossil fragments found of these beasties in Wales. Shortly thereafter, fossil vertebrae were published in 1708 from the Lower Jurassic.

The first complete skeleton was discovered in the early 19th century by Mary Anning and her brother Joseph along the Dorset Jurassic Coast. Mary's find was described by a British surgeon, Sir Everard Home, an elected Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1814. The specimen is now on display at the Natural History Museum in London bearing the name Temnodontosaurus platyodon, or “cutting-tooth lizard.”

In 1821, William Conybeare and Henry De La Beche, a friend of Mary's, published a paper describing three new species of unknown marine reptiles based on the Anning's finds. The Rev. William Buckland would go on to describe two small ichthyosaurs from the Lias of Lyme Regis, Ichthyosaurus communis and Ichthyosaurus intermedius. All of this early work was instrumental in aiding the researchers who would join the project at Luning.

Owen is considered to have been an outstanding naturalist with a remarkable gift for interpreting fossils. Contrary to common belief, advanced study does help with identifying fossils, but what is truly needed is a keen eye. The finds at Luning were blessed to be seen by an enthusiastic local with just that right kind of keen eye.

Almost a quarter of a century after Muller's initial reports, Dr. Charles L. Camp from UCMP received correspondence further detailing the finds from a lovely Mrs. Margaret Wheat of Fallon. She wrote to Camp in September of 1928 to say that she'd been giving the quarry section a bit of a sweep, as you do, and had uncovered a nice aligned section of vertebrae with her broom. The following year, Dr. Charles L. Camp went out to survey the finds and began working on the specimens, his first field season of many, in 1954.

Back in the 1950s, these large marine reptiles were rumoured to be "marine monsters," as the concept of an ichthyosaur was not well understood by the local townsfolk. Excitement soon hit West Union Canyon as the quarry began to reveal the sheer size of these mighty beasts. Four of the specimens were fully excavated. Most of the ichthyosaur bones were left in situ, partially because the work was tremendously difficult, and partially to allow others to see how the specimens were laid down over 200 million years ago.

Camp continued to work with Wheat at the site and brought on Sam Welles and a host of students to help with excavations. The team understood the need for protection at the site. They canvassed the Nevada Legislature to establish the Ichthyosaur Paleontological State Monument. You can see one of the Park Rangers above giving a tour within the lovely Fossil Hut building they built on the site to protect the fossils.

In 1957, the site was incorporated into the State Park System and Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park was born. The park Twenty years later, in 1977, the population of Nevada weighed in and the Legislature designated Shonisaurus popularis as the State Fossil of Nevada. Visitors are welcome to collect fossils from the exposures of the Upper Triassic (Early Norian, Kerri Zone) of the Luning Formation, West Union Canyon, just outside Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park.

Address: State route 844, Austin, NV 89310, United States. Area: 4.58 km². Open 24 hours;
Elevation: 6,975 ft (2,126 m); Tel: +1 775-964-2440; http://parks.nv.gov/parks/berlin-ichthyosaur

VANCOUVER ISLAND'S TRENT RIVER PALAEONTOLOGY

Dan Bowen, Chair, VIPS, Trent River

The rocks that make up the Trent River on Vancouver Island are on the move. They were laid down near of the equator as small, tropical islands. They rode across the Pacific heading north and slightly east over the past 85 million years to where we find them today.

The Pacific Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate that lies beneath the Pacific Ocean. And it is massive. At 103 million km2 (40 million sq mi), it is the largest tectonic plate and continues to grow fed by volcanic eruptions that piggyback onto its trailing edge.

This relentless expansion pushes the Pacific Plate into the North American Plate. The pressure subducts it beneath our continent where it then melts back into the earth. Plate tectonics are slow but powerful forces. 

The island chains that rode the plates across the Pacific smashed into our coastline and slowly built the province of British Columbia. And because each of those islands had a different origin, they create pockets of interesting and diverse geology.

It is these islands that make up the Insular Belt — a physio-geological region on the northwestern North American coast. It consists of three major island groups — and many smaller islands — that stretches from southern British Columbia up into Alaska and the Yukon. These bits of islands on the move arrived from the Late Cretaceous through the Eocene — and continues to this day.

The rocks that form the Insular Superterrane are allochthonous, meaning they are not related to the rest of the North American continent. The rocks we walk over along the Trent River are distinct from those we find throughout the rest of Vancouver Island, Haida Gwaii, the rest of the province of British Columbia and completely foreign to those we find next door in Alberta.

To discover what we do find on the Trent takes only a wee stroll, a bit of digging and time to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. The first geological forays to Vancouver Island were to look for coal deposits, the profitable remains of ancient forests that could be burned to the power industry.

Jim Monger and Charlie Ross of the Geological Survey of Canada both worked to further our knowledge of the complex geology of the Comox Basin. They were at the cutting edge of west coast geology in the 1970s. It was their work that helped tease out how and where the rocks we see along the Trent today were formed and made their way north.

We know from their work that by 85 million years ago, the Insular Superterrane had made its way to what is now British Columbia. 

The lands were forested much as they are now but by extinct genera and families. The fossil remains of trees similar to oak, poplar, maple and ash can be found along the Trent and Vancouver Island. We also see the lovely remains of flowering plants such as Cupanities crenularis, figs and breadfruit.

Heading up the river, you come to a delineation zone that clearly marks the contact between the dark grey marine shales and mudstones of the Haslam Formation where they meet the sandstones of the Comox Formation. Fossilized material is less abundant in the Comox sandstones but still contains some interesting specimens. Here you begin to see fossilized wood and identifiable fossil plant material.

Further upstream, there is a small tributary, Idle Creek, where you can find more of this terrestrial material in the sandy shales. As you walk up, you see identifiable fossil plants beneath your feet and jungle-like, overgrown moss-covered, snarly trees all around you.

Walking west from the Trent River Falls at the bottom, you pass the infamous Ammonite Alley, where you can find Mesopuzosia sp. and Kitchinites sp. of the Upper Cretaceous (Santonian), Haslam Formation. Minding the slippery green algae covering some of the river rocks, you can see the first of the Polytychoceras vancouverense zone.

Continuing west, you reach the first of two fossil turtle sites on the river — amazingly, one terrestrial and one marine. If you continue, you come to the Inland Island Highway.

The Trent River has yielded some very interesting marine specimens, and significant terrestrial finds. We have found a wonderful terrestrial helochelydrid turtle, Naomichelys speciosa, and the caudal vertebrae of a Hadrosauroid dinosaur. Walking down from the Hadrosaur site you come to the site of the fossil ratfish find — one of the ocean's oddest fish.

Ratfish, Hydrolagus Collie, are chimaera found in the north-eastern Pacific Ocean today. The fossil specimen from the Trent would be considered large by modern standards as it is a bruiser in comparison to his modern counterparts. 

This robust fellow had exceptionally large eyes and sex organs that dangled enticingly between them. You mock, but there are many ratfish who would differ. While inherently sexy by ratfish standards, this fellow was not particularly tasty to their ancient marine brethren (or humans today) — so not hugely sought after as a food source or prey.

A little further again from the ratfish site we reach the contact of the two Formations. The rocks here have travelled a long way to their current location. With them, we peel away the layers of the geologic history of both the Comox Valley and the province of British Columbia.

The Trent River is not far from the Puntledge, a river whose banks have also revealed many wonderful fossil specimens. The Puntledge is also the name used by the K'ómoks First Nation to describe themselves. They have lived here since time immemorial. Along with Puntledge, they refer to themselves as Sahtloot, Sasitla and Ieeksun.

References: Note on the occurrence of the marine turtle Desmatochelys (Reptilia: Chelonioidea) from the Upper Cretaceous of Vancouver Island Elizabeth L. Nicholls Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences (1992) 29 (2): 377–380. https://doi.org/10.1139/e92-033; References: Chimaeras - The Neglected Chondrichthyans". Elasmo-research.org. Retrieved 2017-07-01.

Directions: If you're keen to explore the area, park on the side of Highway 19 about three kilometres south of Courtenay and hike up to the Trent River. Begin to look for parking about three kilometres south of the Cumberland Interchange. There is a trail that leads from the highway down beneath the bridge which will bring you to the Trent River's north side.

NEVADA FOSSILS: CARNIAN-NORIAN BOUNDARY

Time Slows at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park

High on the hillside up a long entry road sits the entrance to Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in central Nevada.

A worn American flag and sun bleached outbuildings greet you on your way to the outcrops. Away from the hustle and bustle that define the rest of Nevada this place feels remarkably serene. Your eyes squint against the sun as you search for ammonoids and other marine fossil fauna while your nose tends to the assault from the bracing smell of sage brush.

This site holds many stories. The interpretive centre displays wonderful marine reptiles, ichthyosaurs in situ, as you might expect from the name of the park — but it also showcases years of history lovingly tended. This stretch of dry golden low hills dappled with the yellow of creosote and desert grasses is an important locality for our understanding of the Carnian-Norian boundary (CNB) in North America.

The area is known worldwide as one of the most important ichthyosaur Fossil-Lagerstätte because of the sheer volume of remarkably well-preserved, fully articulated (all the sweet bones laid out all in a row...) specimens of Shonisaurus popularis.

Rich ammonoid faunas outcrop in the barren hills of the Upper Triassic (Early Norian, Kerri zone), Luning Formation, West Union Canyon, Nevada. They were studied by N. J. Silberling (1959) and provide support for the definition of the Schucherti and Macrolobatus zones of the latest Carnian — which are here overlain by well-preserved faunas of the earliest Norian Kerri Zone. 

The genus Gonionotites, very common in the Tethys and British Columbia, is for the moment, unknown in Nevada. The Upper Carnian faunas are dominated by Tropitidae, while Juvavitidae are conspicuously lacking. 

Middle Triassic Ammonoids

Despite its importance, no further investigations had been done at this site for a good 50 years. That changed in 2010 when Jim Haggart, Mike Orchard and Paul Smith — all local Vancouverites — collaborated on a project that took them down to Nevada to look at the conodonts and ammonoids. They did a bed-by-bed sampling of ammonoids and conodonts in West Union Canyon during October of that year.

October is an ideal time to do fieldwork in this area. There are a few good weeks between screaming hot and frigid cold. It is also tarantula breeding season so keep your eyes peeled. Those sweet little burrows you see are not from rodents but rather largish arachnids. 

The eastern side of the canyon provides the best record of the Macrolobatus Zone, which is represented by several beds yielding ammonoids of the Tropites group, together with Anatropites div. sp. 

Conodont faunas from both these and higher beds are dominated by ornate metapolygnthids that would formerly have been collectively referred to Metapolygnathus primitius, a species long known to straddle the CNB. Within this lower part of the section, they resemble forms that have been separated as Metapolygnathus mersinensis. Slightly higher, forms close to Epigondolella' orchardi and a single Orchardella n. sp. occur. This association can be correlated with the latest Carnian in British Columbia.

Higher in the section, the ammonoid fauna shows a sudden change and is dominated by Tropithisbites. Few tens of metres above, but slightly below the first occurrence of Norian ammonoids Guembelites jandianus and Stikinoceras, two new species of conodonts (Gen et sp. nov. A and B) appear that also occur close to the favoured Carnian/Norian boundary at Black Bear Ridge, British Columbia. Stratigraphically higher collections continue to be dominated by forms close to M. mersinensis and E. orchardi after BC's own Mike Orchard.

The best exposure of the Kerri Zone is on the western side of the West Union Canyon. Ammonoids, dominated by Guembelites and Stikinoceras div. sp., have been collected from several fossil-bearing levels. Conodont faunas replicate those of the east section. The collected ammonoids fit perfectly well with the faunas described by Silberling in 1959, but they differ somewhat from coeval faunas of the Tethys and Canada. 

The ammonoid fauna paints a compelling picture of Tethyan influence with a series of smoking guns. We see an abundance of Tropitidae in the Carnian, a lack of Pterosirenites in the Norian, copious Guembelites, the Tethyan species G. philostrati, the stratigraphic position of G. clavatus and the rare occurrence of Gonionotites. Their hallelujah moment was likely finding an undescribed species of the thin-shelled bivalve Halobia similar to Halobia beyrichi — the clincher that perhaps seals this deal on Tethyan influence. 

I'll take a boo to see what Christopher McRoberts published on the find. A jolly good idea to have him on this expedition as it would have been easy to overlook if the focus remained solely on the conodonts and ammonoids. McRoberts has published on the much-studied Pardonet Formation up in the Willison Lake Area of Northeastern, British Columbia. He knows a thing or two about Upper Triassic Bivalvia and the correlation to coeval faunas elsewhere in the North American Cordillera, and to the Boreal, Panthalassan and Tethyan faunal realms. 

If you fancy a read, they published a paper: "Towards the definition of the Carnian/Norian Boundary: New data on Ammonoids and Conodonts from central Nevada," which you can find in the proceedings of the 21st Canadian Paleontology Conference; by Haggart, J W (ed.); Smith, P L (ed.); Canadian Paleontology Conference Proceedings no. 9, 2011 p. 9-10.

Fig. 1. Location map of Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park

Marco Balini, James Jenks, Riccardo Martin, Christopher McRoberts, along with Mike Orchard and Norman Siberling, did a bed by bed sampling in 2013 and published on The Carnian/Norian boundary succession at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park (Upper Triassic, central Nevada, USA) and published in January 2014 in Paläontologische Zeitschrift 89:399–433. That work is available for download from ResearchGate. The original is in German, but there is a translation available.

After years of reading about the correlation between British Columbia and Nevada, I had the very great pleasure of walking through these same sections in October 2019 with members of the Vancouver Paleontological Society and Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society. It was with that same crew that I'd originally explored fossil sites in the Canadian Rockies in the early 2000s. Those early trips led to paper after paper and the exciting revelations that inspired our Nevada adventure.

If you plan your own adventure, you'll want to keep an eye out for some of the other modern fauna — mountain lions, snakes, lizards, scorpions, wolves, coyotes, foxes, ground squirrels, rabbits, falcons, hawks, eagles, bobcats, sheep, deer and pronghorns.

Figure One: Location map of Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. A detailed road log with access information for this locality is provided in Lucas et al. (2007).

UPPER TRIASSIC LUNING FORMATION, NEVADA

Exposures of the Upper Triassic (Early Norian, Kerri zone), Luning formation, West Union Canyon, just outside Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park, Nevada.

The Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in central Nevada is a very important locality for the understanding of the Carnian-Norian boundary (CNB) in North America.

Rich ammonoid faunas from this site within the Luning Formation were studied by Silberling (1959) and provided support for the definition of the Schucherti and Macrolobatus zones of the latest Carnian, which are here overlain by well-preserved faunas of the earliest Norian Kerri Zone. Despite its importance, no further investigations have been done at this site during the last 50 years.

Jim Haggart, Mike Orchard and Paul Smith (all local Vancouverites) collaborated on a project that took them down to Nevada to look at the conodonts (Oh, Mike) and ammonoids (Jim's fav); the group then published a paper, "Towards the definition of the Carnian/Norian Boundary: New data on Ammonoids and Conodonts from central Nevada," which you can find in the proceedings of the 21st Canadian Paleontology Conference; by Haggart, J W (ed.); Smith, P L (ed.); Canadian Paleontology Conference Proceedings no. 9, 2011 p. 9-10.

They conducted a bed-by-bed sampling of ammonoids and conodonts in West Union Canyon during October 2010. The eastern side of the canyon provides the best record of the Macrolobatus Zone, which is represented by several beds yielding ammonoids of the Tropites group, together with Anatropites div. sp. Conodont faunas from both these and higher beds are dominated by ornate 'metapolygnthids' that would formerly have been collectively referred to Metapolygnathus primitius, a species long known to straddle the CNB. Within this lower part of the section, they resemble forms that have been separated as Metapolygnathus mersinensis. Slightly higher, forms close to Epigondolella' orchardi and a single Orchardella n. sp. occur. This association can be correlated with the latest Carnian in British Columbia.

Higher in the section, the ammonoid fauna shows a sudden change and is dominated by Tropithisbites. Few tens of metres above, but slightly below the first occurrence of Norian ammonoids Guembelites jandianus and Stikinoceras, two new species of conodonts (Gen et sp. nov. A and B) appear that also occur close to the favoured Carnian/Norian boundary at Black Bear Ridge, British Columbia. Stratigraphically higher collections continue to be dominated by forms close to M. mersinensis and E. orchardi. after BC's own Mike Orchard.

The best exposure of the Kerri Zone is on the western side of the West Union Canyon. Ammonoids, dominated by Guembelites and Stikinoceras div. sp., have been collected from several fossil-bearing levels. Conodont faunas replicate those of the east section. The collected ammonoids fit perfectly well with the faunas described by Silberling in 1959, but they differ somewhat from coeval faunas of the Tethys and Canada.

The genus Gonionotites, very common in the Tethys and British Columbia, is for the moment unknown in Nevada. More in general, the Upper Carnian faunas are dominated by Tropitidae, while Juvavitidae are lacking.

After years of reading about the correlation between British Columbia and Nevada, I had the very great pleasure of walking through these same sections in October 2019 with members of the Vancouver Paleontological Society and Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society. It was with that same crew that I'd originally explored fossil sites in the Canadian Rockies in the early 2000s. Those early trips led to paper after paper and the exciting revelations that inspired our Nevada adventure.

AMMONOIDS, BIVALVES AND POLAR BEARS OF SVALBARD

 This marvellous block is filled with Aristoptychites (syn=Arctoptychites) euglyphus (Mojsisovics, 1886) and Daonella sp., oyster-like saltwater clams or bivalves from the Middle Triassic (Ladinian) outcrops in the Botneheia Formation of Spitzbergen, in Edgeøya and Barentsøya, eastern Svalbard, Norway. 

Daonella and Monotis are important species for our understanding of biostratigraphy in the Triassic and are useful as an index fossil. Daonellids preferred soft, soupy substrates and we tend to find them in massive shell beds.

Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago between mainland Norway and the North Pole. One of the world’s northernmost inhabited areas, it's known for its rugged, remote terrain of glaciers and frozen tundra sheltering polar bears, reindeer and Arctic fox. The Northern Lights are visible during winter, and summer brings the “midnight sun”—sunlight 24 hours a day.

The Botneheia Formation is made up of dark grey, laminated shales coarsening upwards to laminated siltstones and sandstones. South of the type area, the formation shows several (up to four) coarsening-upward units. 

The formation is named for Botneheia Mountain, a mountain in Nordenskiöld Land at Spitsbergen, Svalbard. It has a height of 522 m.a.s.l., and is located south of Sassenfjorden, east of the valley of De Geerdalen. 

Polar Bears, Ursus maritimus

As well as lovely ammonoids and bivalves, we have found ichthyosaur remains. 

It is not a huge surprise. We had been expecting too, but it was not until the early 2000s that the first bones were found.

Two specimens have of ichthyosaur have been recovered. They comprise part of the trunk and the caudal vertebral column respectively. 

Some features, such as the very high and narrow caudal and posterior thoracic neural spines, the relatively elongate posterior thoracic vertebrae and the long and slender haemapophyses tell us that they probably represent a member of the family Toretocnemidae. 

Numerous ichthyosaur finds are known from the underlying Lower Triassic Vikinghøgda Formation and the overlying Middle to Upper Triassic Tschermakfjellet Formation, the new specimens help to close a huge gap in the fossil record of the Triassic ichthyosaurs from Svalbard.

There is a resident research group working on the Triassic ichthyosaur fauna, the Spitsbergen Mesozoic Research Group. Lucky for them, they often find the fossil remains fully articulated — the bones having retained their spacial relationship to one another. Most of their finds are of the tail sections of primitive Triassic ichthyosaurs. In later ichthyosaurs, the tail vertebrae bend steeply downwards and have more of a fish-like look. In these primitive ancestors, the tail looks more eel-like — bending slightly so that the spines on the vertebrae form more of the tail.

Maisch, Michael W. and Blomeier, Dierk published on these finds back in 2009: Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie - Abhandlungen Band 254 Heft 3 (2009), p. 379 - 384. Nov 1, 2009

The lovely block you see here is in the collections of the deeply awesome John Fam. The image of the Polar Bears, Ursus maritimus, is courtesy of the Fossil Huntress. 

TEMNODONTOSAURUS CRASSIMANUS

Temnodontosaurus crassimanus

This big beastie is the ichthyosaur, Temnodontosaurus crassimanus, who graced our ancient oceans 180 million years ago. The species was originally named by Richard Owen, the first superintendent of the Natural History Museum. Owen lived at the height of the gentleman scientist and it was Owen who first coined the name dinosaur. Dean Lomax did some work with this specimen as part of his research leading up to his PhD.

The fellow you see here is the Type Specimen for the species and he lives on display in the Yorkshire Museum. As the reference specimen for the species, all hopeful specimens that may belong to this species are checked against the Type Specimen to see if they share diagnostic features.

The Yorkshire Museum was given this important ichthyosaur fossil back in 1857, albeit in bits and pieces. The first bits of fossil bones were found near Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast by workmen quarrying alum. They recognized the bones as belonging to a fossilized reptile and alerted local authorities who in turn alerted the good Master Owen.

It was quite an undertaking to recover as it was found in more than fifty pieces in massive shale blocks and the alum quarry was active at the time. Alum quarrying helped share the Yorkshire Coast as an important staple of the textile industry going back to the 16th-century. By the 1860s, alum quarrying was slowing down. The ability to manufacture synthetic alum by 1855 had shifted the industry and it died out entirely by 1871. Lucky for us, the last years of alum production gifted us this well-preserved eight-metre specimen, one of the largest ichthyosaurs ever discovered in the UK.

Paleo-coordinates: 54.5° N, 0.6° W: paleocoordinates 42.4° N, 9.3° E

BERLIN-ICHTHYOSAUR STATE PARK

At least 37 incomplete fossil specimens of the marine reptile have been found in hard limestone deposits of the Luning Formation, in far northwestern Nye County of Nevada. 

This formation dates to the late Carnian age of the late Triassic period when present-day Nevada and parts of the west were covered by an ancient ocean.

The first researcher to recognize the Nevada fossil specimens as ichthyosaurs was Siemon W. Muller of Stanford University. 

Muller had the work of Sir Richard Owen to build upon from Owen's 1840 publications. That being said, there are very few contenders for a species that boasts vertebrae over a foot wide and weighing in at almost 10 kg or 21 lbs. 

Muller contacted the University of California Museum of Paleontology at Berkeley. Surface collecting by locals continued at the site but no major excavation was planned.

Almost a quarter of a century after Muller's initial correspondence to the UCMP, Dr. Charles L. Camp received correspondence further detailing the finds from a lovely Mrs. Margaret Wheat of Fallon. She wrote to Camp in September of 1928 to say that she'd been giving the quarry section a bit of a sweep, as you do, and had uncovered a nice aligned section of vertebrae with her broom. The following year, Dr. Charles L. Camp went out to survey the finds and began working on the specimens, his first field season of many, in 1954.

Back in the 1950s, these large marine reptiles were rumoured to be "marine monsters," as the concept of an ichthyosaur was not well understood by the local townsfolk. Excitement soon hit West Union Canyon as the quarry began to reveal the sheer size of these mighty beasts. In the end, the ichthyosaur bones were left in situ to better understand how they were laid down over 200 million years ago.

Camp continued to work with Wheat at the site and brought on Sam Welles to help with excavations. The team understood the need for protection at the site. They canvassed the Nevada Legislature to establish the Ichthyosaur Paleontological State Monument. You can one of the Park Rangers above giving a tour within the lovely building they built on the site to protect the fossils.

In 1957, the site was incorporated into the State Park System and Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park was born. The park Twenty years later, in 1977, the population of Nevada weighed in and the Legislature designated Shonisaurus popularis as the State Fossil of Nevada.

Know Before You Go — Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park

This is a wonderful place to explore for a very reasonable sum of $5.00 US. Open year-round (though check regarding accessibility during Covid). They have accessible outcrops just outside the park boundary where you can collect ammonoid fossils. 

Contact information: Tel: 775-964-2440 / Email: bisp@parks.nv.gov. 

Address: State Route 844, Austin, NV 89310, United States. Area: 4.58 km². Elevation: 6,975 ft (2,126 m); Tel: +1 775-964-2440; http://parks.nv.gov/parks/berlin-ichthyosaur