“It is a completely new species to science and the first found and identified in the entire Iberian Peninsula, thereby extending the known range of these animals at this time,” stated João Pratas, a researcher and collaborator at the Lourinhã Museum, where the fossil was transported.
The Marinha Grande Municipality announced today the discovery of a new species of marine reptile belonging to the ichthyosaur group, or ‘fish-lizards,’ which inhabited the region more than 190 million years ago during the Early Jurassic period.
Named ‘Gadusaurus aqualigneus,’ this new ichthyosaur was discovered at Água de Madeiros beach by Isabel Morais Roldão, a teacher at Francisco Rodrigues Lobo Secondary School in Leiria.
According to the municipality, the name ‘Gadusaurus aqualigneus’ references the codfish (‘Gadus’), due to morphological similarities with ichthyosaurs and the Água de Madeiros beach.
“The choice of the name honors the fish that is a cultural symbol of Portuguese identity, linking paleontological heritage and intangible heritage,” they explained.
The municipality mentioned that the animal is relatively small, distinguished by a large nasal foramen, bigger than documented in other species, and two symmetrical grooves in the surrounding bones.
“The skull shows some disarticulation, suggesting it might be a younger animal whose bones were not yet fully fused, or the bones dislocated during fossilization,” they clarified.
João Pratas, the lead author of a scientific article published a week ago in the journal ‘Acta Palaeontologica Polonica,’ stated that following the discovery by Isabel Morais Roldão, the second author of the article, she delivered the specimen to the Lourinhã Museum.
A process of preparation and cleaning followed in the museum’s laboratories, as well as observations to help attempt an identification of the specimen, noted the Ph.D. student from Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
“Then we made comparisons with previously known ichthyosaurs and conducted phylogenetic analyses, which are the typical procedures to try to identify what we are dealing with,” he added, noting that all details are included in the published article.
The animal is part of a group of marine reptiles known as ichthyosaurs, the fish-lizards, “a group of reptiles that adapted to a marine environment, developing a very hydrodynamic body shape,” continued João Pratas.
“This is a type of evolution similar to what we observe in modern-day whales. They would have been animals with a very hydrodynamic body, a long snout, tails, and fins similar to those of a shark or a dolphin, with large characteristic eyes,” he specified.
João Pratas added that the region between Marinha Grande, in the Leiria district, and Lourinhã (Lisbon) has long had a significant fossil repository.
“As far as we know, in these prehistoric times, this region had the fortune of possessing various necessary characteristics for being good fossil preservation sites. That’s why in these regions it is quite frequent to find various things, sometimes fragments, other times complete specimens, allowing us to make discoveries like the one in this article,” the researcher added.
