Marine reptile collection

Strengths

The collection’s highlights are on display in the Museum’s Fossil Marine Reptile gallery, including:

• the first ichthyosaur skull, now called Temnodontosaurus platyodon, discovered in 1810
• the first articulated plesiosaur, Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus, discovered in 1823.

Large collections of Callovian (Middle Jurassic) marine reptiles from Cambridgeshire brick pits were purchased from Alfred Leeds in 1890 and 1914. These include many type and figured skeletons of plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs and marine crocodiles, including:

• the plesiosaur Cryptocleidus eurymerus
• the ichthyosaur Ophthalmosaurus icenicus

Major collections

The collection also contains other important marine reptile fossils from the Lower Lias of Dorset, in the UK, including those of Thomas Hawkins and the Earl of Enniskillen, who both purchased specimens from Mary Anning.

We have a small number of isolated bones and teeth of both ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs from a range of Late Jurassic and Cretaceous sites in Britain.

Our collection also includes a unique plesiosaur, Leptoclidus, from the Wealden Group of Sussex.

More recent acquisitions include two Pliensbachian ichthyosaurs from the Dorset coast, one of which is the type specimen of Leptonectes moorei.

Country of origin

Britain