Reno Reporter

It appears that ichthyosaur birthing grounds have been found in Nevada with the help of an engineering professor and a former undergraduate researcher from the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR).

According to a press release shared by the university, approximately 40 petrified sea reptiles the size of school bus are buried at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. The long-studied fossils have been researched for decades with the ichthyosaur's (Shonisaurus popularis) generating a culture following as the state fossil and inspiring the name of the local beer company, the Icky IPA from the Great Basin Brewing Co.

“This latest inference about Nevada's ichthyosaurs gives us insight into these organisms as animals fully alive and dynamically inhabiting their environment,” former undergraduate student Paige dePolo said.  “It's so neat how carefully integrating the geology and fossil record of a site can yield a rich sense of how ancient animals lived. We're getting a window to behavior more than 200 million years in the past.”

For years researchers have been seeking an answer as to why so many animals drowned in the Triassic Sea over 200 million years ago. They ended up at the center of Nevada's Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.

Utilizing modern paleontological techniques like 3D scanning and geochemistry, researchers have found proof that they say the creatures were seeking a safe location to give birth together. Information suggests that ichthyosaur were migrating similar to that of today's marine giants, the blue and humpback whales, who yearly group together along the same portions of shoreline.

DePolo co-authored the research with UNR professor of geological sciences and engineering Paula Noble in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution and the Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering at UNR, two of the nine organizations that worked together to produce the findings. The outcome of their work was released on December 19 and featured on the journal Current Biology's cover. 

A true team effort, the research also involved main author Neil Kelley, a researcher at Vanderbilt University and a former postdoctoral scholar at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution. He has been collaborating with Noble and dePolo since 2014. 

This discovery is just the beginning of the journey for dePolo, who started her investigation as an undergraduate in Noble's lab and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in vertebrate paleontology at the University of Edinburgh. She said that the research gives these really old animals a new perspective.