Prehistoric marine reptiles appear in Winterswijk

marine reptiles

Because no limestone was mined for eleven days in the Winterswijk quarry, Reumer and his colleagues had the opportunity to search for fossils. They made an unusual find: teeth and vertebrae of marine reptiles. The teeth are definitely from some kind of plesiosaur. For about 174 million years, the Earth was populated by many different species of plesiosaurs, until the latter were wiped out 66 million years ago by a huge meteorite impact. The vertebrae found in Winterswijk could come from a plesiosaur, but also from an ichthyosaur. Ichthyosaurs are also marine reptiles, but are more dolphin-like in appearance.

no dinosaurs

The fossils found are old: more than 200 million years. The animals lived in the Triassic period, the first of the three “dinosaur epochs”. Although Plesiosaurus and Ichthyosaurus are sometimes called dinosaurs, they are very different animals. They represent other branches of the family tree of life.

Awaiting further investigation

After the discovery by Reumer and his colleagues, the remains were largely chopped up, after which the piece of stone with the fossil was plastered over. The fossil is now somewhere in a shed in Winterswijk, waiting to be transported to Naturalis. Here the fossil will be carefully removed from the stone and examined in more detail. This investigation, which will take another six months at least, should reveal, among other things, which species are concerned.