Archaeology discovery: 14ft lizard fossil found in 240million year old sea monster

But it turned out to be its final meal when the bigger beast died soon after – leading to the largest fossil discovered inside another creature. The 15ft ichthyosaur’s powerful jaws enabled it to rip the lizard to bits – despite being only slightly smaller. Both were primitive marine reptiles. Professor Ryosuke Motani, of the University of California, Davis, said: “We have never found articulated remains of a large reptile in the stomach of gigantic predators from the age of dinosaurs – such as marine reptiles and dinosaurs.

“We always guessed from tooth shape and jaw design that these predators must have fed on large prey but now we have direct evidence that they did.

“Our ichthyosaur’s stomach contents weren’t etched by stomach acid, so it must have died quite soon after ingesting this food item.

“At first, we just didn’t believe it. But after spending several years visiting the dig site and looking at the same specimens, we finally were able to ‘swallow’ what we were seeing.”

The dolphin-like Guizhouichthyosaurus was unearthed at a quarry in Guizhou province in southwestern China in 2010.

Its almost complete skeleton was remarkably preserved and contained the 12ft-long thalattosaur.

Named Xinpusaurus xingyiensis, it was identified from a large block of smaller bones that bulge from the other animal’s abdomen. It had a more slender, lizardlike frame – and four paddling limbs. These were still partially attached to its body. Its tail was found many yards away.

This showed the predator’s last meal was the thalattosaur’s middle section, from its front to back legs. It had been snapped in three. Its head has not been found.

The beasts appeared in the oceans after the Permian mass extinction 250 million years ago – and some grew to 60 feet.

They had fish-like bodies similar to modern tuna but breathed air like dolphins and whales.

The team is still excavating the site where the pair of fossils were found, which has now been turned into a museum. Prof Motani added: “We’ve been digging in that particular quarry for more than 10 years and still new things are coming out.”

The study was published in iScience.

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