
In what must rank as one of the rarer fossil assemblages ever discovered, an incredible moment where the whole top-third of the Cretaceous era marine food chain was being sorted out has been presented by scientists.
Following 7 years of study, the jumble of bones is nothing less than the remains of a flying reptile known as a pterosaur lodged inside the stomach of an ichthyosaur—a large and widely-dispersed, versatile marine predator.
The ichthyosaur's body was determined to have been mangled by something even larger—likely a pliosaur, and perhaps even Kronosaurus queenslandicus, the largest pliosaurid known to have lived, and as the species name suggests, was first discovered in the Australian state of Queensland, where the fossil jumble was found.
"[It is] a marine reptile crime scene, and it did take a bit of working out to tell that story," Dr. Matt White, a paleontologist at the University of New England in Australia and lead author of the study presenting the discovery, tells ABC News Down Under.
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