Scientists have found a 16 foot long fossil of a new species of fish-like lizard that swam the seas 160 million years ago when dinosaurs ruled on land.
The ichthyosaur -- a giant reptile with fins and big teeth -- was found with another 10 or so skeletons of creatures in a Jurassic graveyard on a Norwegian Arctic island about 1,000 miles from the North Pole.
"We believe it's a new species of ichthyosaur," Joern Hurum, assistant professor at Oslo's Geological Museum, told Reuters on Thursday. The creature looked a bit like a cross between a crocodile and a dolphin.
"Only a few species of ichthyosaur are known and none of this age from this region," he said of the site on Svalbard. Other ichthyosaurs from the Jurassic period have been found in Germany and Britain.
The Norwegian scientists found the fossils almost by chance after they were sent to dig up a smaller fossil plesiosaur -- a type of long-necked aquatic reptile with four big flippers -- found by students two years ago.
"We found about 10 skeletons in the same place," Hurum said, including a far bigger plesiosaur about 33 feet long. The 3 foot long head of the ichthyosaur had been taken to Oslo for further study.
Scientists had covered over the Arctic site because frosts had returned after the brief summer. "It's really hard to dig in the region with permafrost," Hurum said. "There's probably only about a month a year when the site is accessible."
Ichthyosaurs fed on squid and other marine organisms in warm seas. In the Jurassic period, the site of the Arctic fossil bed would have been far further south, around what is now Germany.
