Deep inside a limestone collapse western Cuba, paleontologists have discovered essentially the most full ichthyosaur skeleton but discovered on the island.
Ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaurs. Picture credit score: Dmitry Bogdanov / CC BY 3.0.
The ichthyosaur skeleton was found in 2023 in a fluvial collapse El Cuajaní, inside the Viñales Geopark and Nationwide Park in western Cuba.
The uncovered section of the skeleton consists of the U-shaped curved vertebral column with related ribs, remoted vertebrae, and a single hindlimb.
“The specimen is preserved within the rock slab that varieties the ceiling of the fluvial cave now referred to as Cueva del Ictiosaurio, at roughly 60 m from its entrance,” mentioned Dr. Manuel Iturralde-Vinent from the Academia de Ciencias de Cuba and his colleagues from Cuba, Argentina, Poland and the US.
The fossil dates again roughly 145 million years in the past to the Tithonian age of the Late Jurassic epoch.
Till now, Cuba’s ichthyosaur document was largely confined to older, Oxfordian deposits.
“This fossil represents essentially the most full ichthyosaur recovered from Cuba to this point,” the paleontologists mentioned.
“It extends the temporal document of ichthyosaurs on the island, which beforehand solely included specimens from the Oxfordian.”
The partial skeleton of the El Cuajaní ichthyosaur. Picture credit score: Iturralde-Vinent et al., doi: 10.1080/02724634.2025.2609717.
Although the El Cuajaní ichthyosaur, because the researchers informally name it, can’t but be assigned to a particular species, its anatomy suggests affinities with a household of ichthyosaurs referred to as Ophthalmosauridae.
“Its hindlimb morphology is similar to that of Tithonian platypterygiine ophthalmosaurids, resembling Caypullisaurus bonapartei and Aegirosaurus leptospondylus,” they defined.
Based on the scientists, the animal lived in a deep, open-marine inside the early Caribbean seaway, a key marine hall connecting distant components of the Jurassic world.
“The Caribbean seaway turned an vital marine hall for the reason that mid Oxfordian, connecting the Japanese and Western Tethys, enjoying a pivotal position within the marine faunal dispersal for the reason that Late Jurassic between Europe, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific,” they mentioned.
“This hall had a modern Triassic-Early Jurassic ancestry represented by intercontinental rift valleys which shouldn’t be thought-about a part of the early Caribbean basin or the Gulf of Mexico per se, however had been precursors situated in west-central Pangea.”
“The El Cuajaní ichthyosaur provides to the rising physique of Tithonian ichthyosaur just lately found within the area and will contribute to a greater understanding of the biogeographic historical past of the group,” they concluded.
Their paper was printed on February 6 within the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
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Manuel Iturralde-Vinent et al. A partial ichthyosaur (?Ophthalmosauridae) skeleton from the Tithonian (Higher Jurassic) of western Cuba. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, printed on-line February 6, 2026; doi: 10.1080/02724634.2025.2609717
