A few years ago, you probably came across one of *those* headlines. You know the ones: palaeontology news reported by someone who doesn't know the first thing about palaeontology, & thinks people are too thick to understand more than the absolute basics of prehistoric beasts. Thus, today's beastie was announced to the world as "NESSIE'S SCARIER/CUTER/COOLER RELATIVE/ANCESTOR/PREDATOR/." Which, given how distantly related Ichthyosaurs are to Plesiosaurs, is a bit like calling a snake a relative of a pigeon.
But I digress.
Dearcmhara shawcrossi ("Shawcross's Sea Lizard") swam the Jurassic seas of 175-182 million years ago, with the type fossil finding rest at what is now Bearreraig on the Isle of Skye. The majority of Scottish fossils tend to be for marine animals, but this is Scotland's first Ichthyosaur.
One of the coolest things about Dearcmhara is its name, which means "sea lizard": it's derived from the Scottish Gaelic, rather than the Latin or Greek most prehistoric reptiles receive. This follows an increasingly common convention among palaeontologists to adopt the local language into an animal's official name, like Bistahieversor (Navajo), Guanlong (Chinese), Jeyawati (Zuni), Luskhan (Mongolian), and so on. Given how many animals already have Latin/Greek specific names, it's both useful and imaginative to adopt other languages.
I've depicted Dearcmhara with a pod of babbies: Ichthyosaur remains strongly suggest live birth, so it seems a nice meme to convey.
MAW
MAW
MAW
MAW
MA
MA
MAM
MAMMY
MAMMY
MAMMY
MAMMY
DINNAE YOUSE STAIRT!
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