This 200-million-year-old baby ichthyosaur died with a belly full of squid

Millions of years ago during the early Jurassic period, a baby marine reptile called an ichthyosaur gorged itself on prehistoric calamari. Then, it died abruptly — its belly full of squid.

Roughly 200 million years later, paleontologist Dean Lomax was examining this creature’s fossilized remains at the University of Birmingham’s Lapworth Museum of Geology when he realized he was seeing a few fossil firsts. The two-foot-long skeleton was the first fossilized newborn of its species. So it was certainly the first to be found with leftover squid in its guts. He and paleontologist Nigel Larkin published their findings last week in the journal Historical Biology.

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