Smallest Ichthyosaurus ever found was squid-eating newborn, research reveals

A museum specimen has revealed details of the early life of a marine reptile from the Age of Dinosaurs

Not all new palaeontology discoveries are made on dramatic rocky outcrops. Sometimes dusty drawers in the back-rooms of museums are the source of exciting discoveries. A new study by Dean Lomax, a researcher at the University of Manchester, and colleagues on a previously neglected specimen in the the Lapworth Museum of Geology, University of Birmingham, UK, has increased our knowledge of how the youngest ichthyosaurs - a group of extinct marine reptiles - lived and fed.

Ichthyosaurs were a diverse group of marine reptiles, viewed as the Mesozoic equivalent of modern day whales and dolphins (and a prime example of convergent evolution in action). With streamlined bodies, flippers and tail flukes, they evolved from a reptilian ancestor on land to become highly adapted to an exclusively marine lifestyle. Ranging from smaller, agile hunters less than a metre long to 20-metre, toothless suction feeders like Shastasaurus, we already know a fair deal about these animals - which died out about 95 million years ago - from exceptionally well-preserved fossils.