Forget the Loch Ness monster: Scotland was once home to a swimming
reptile the size of a motorboat. Scientists have discovered the
country’s first known ichthyosaur,
a large marine creature that lived during the Middle Jurassic period
about 170 million years ago. The fragmentary specimen—dubbed
Dearcmhara shawcrossi by researchers who describe it online today in the
Scottish Journal of Geology—is
named after amateur collector Brian Shawcross, who found the fossils on
the shores of Scotland’s rugged and picturesque Isle of Skye.
(
Dearcmhara, pronounced
“jark vara,” is Scottish Gaelic for “marine lizard.”) The ichthyosaur,
pictured here in an artist’s reconstruction, was about 4 meters long and
hunted fish and smaller reptiles in the then-warm seas around Skye,
which has some of the world’s best preserved Middle Jurassic sediments.
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