Earth Sciences Professor Emerita Coauthors Paper on Fossil Thought to be Lost During WWII Bombing
Judy Massare (Emeriti Professor of Earth Sciences) and Dr. Dean Lomax (U of Manchester, UK) coauthored a paper that appeared in Royal Society Open Science. The research reports the discovery of two historically important plaster replicas of the first complete skeleton of a marine reptile fossil.
The specimen, an ichthyosaur, was found by Mary Anning in 1818 at Lyme Regis, along the southern coast of the UK. Unfortunately, the original fossil was destroyed during a bombing raid on London in WWII. Until now, the only record of the specimen was a drawing in an 1819 paper by Sir Everard Home, also published by the Royal Society of London.
The research was featured in an article for CNN online and in the NY Times.