I saw an article about a new ichthyosaur (prehistoric marine reptile related to dinosaurs) and made a note, and when I looked it up to write an article about it, it turns that two new ichthyosaurs have been recently identified. One of them is from the famous fossil-rich area of the Dorset coast of England, and the other was found in Germany.
So, let's go with the new British ichthyosaur first. I'm going to provide both the media article and the scientific reference for both (conveniently, the article about the Deutschland denizen already had the reference in it).
Fossil found on Dorset coast is unique 'sword dragon' species
(The article has an artist's idea of what it looked like.)
"The "sword dragon" is thought to have been about 3m long and has several features that have not been seen in other species of ichthyosaur. Scientists say the strangest detail is a prong-like bone near its nostril. The skull has an enormous eye socket and a long sword-like snout that it used to eat fish and squid."Lomax, Dean R., Judy A. Massare, and Erin E. Maxwell. "A new long and narrow‐snouted ichthyosaur illuminates a complex faunal turnover during an undersampled Early Jurassic (Pliensbachian) interval." Papers in Palaeontology 11, no. 5 (2025): e70038.
" “This genus is notable for its distinctive elongated and slender snout with an extreme overbite by having the mandible drastically shorter than the upper jaw (more than 60%).”
The newly-described Eurhinosaurus species shares the elongation of the upper jaw typical for its genus.
Named Eurhinosaurus mistelgauensis, it lived during the Jurassic period, around 180 million years ago.
Three specimens of the new species were discovered in the Mistelgau clay pit, part of the Jurensismergel Formation southwest of Bayreuth in northern Bavaria, Germany."
Here's a picture of this fossil.
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