As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Deep inside a limestone collapse western Cuba, paleontologists have actually discovered the most total ichthyosaur skeleton yet discovered on the island.
Ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaurs. Image credit: Dmitry Bogdanov/ CC BY 3.0.
The ichthyosaur skeleton was found in 2023 in a fluvial collapse El Cuajaní, within the Viñales Geopark and National Park in western Cuba.
The exposed sector of the skeleton consists of the U-shaped curved vertebral column with associated ribs, separated vertebrae, and a single hindlimb.
“The specimen is protected in the rock piece that forms the ceiling of the fluvial cavern now referred to as Cueva del Ictiosaurio, at roughly 60 m from its entryway,” stated Dr. Manuel Iturralde-Vinent from the Academia de Ciencias de Cuba and his associates from Cuba, Argentina, Poland and the United States.
The fossil go back approximately 145 million years ago to the Tithonian age of the Late Jurassic date.
Previously, Cuba’s ichthyosaur record was mostly restricted to older, Oxfordian deposits.
“This fossil represents the most total ichthyosaur recuperated from Cuba to date,” the paleontologists stated.
“It extends the temporal record of ichthyosaurs on the island, which formerly just consisted of specimens from the Oxfordian.”
The partial skeleton of the El Cuajaní ichthyosaur. Image credit: Iturralde-Vinent et aldoi: 10.1080/ 02724634.2025.2609717.
The El Cuajaní ichthyosaur, as the scientists informally call it, can not yet be appointed to a particular types, its anatomy recommends affinities with a household of ichthyosaurs called Ophthalmosauridae.
“Its hindlimb morphology is similar to that of Tithonian platypterygiine ophthalmosaurids, looking like Caypullisaurus bonapartei and Aegirosaurus leptospondylus,” they discussed.
According to the researchers, the animal resided in a deep, open-marine within the early Caribbean seaway, an essential marine passage linking far-off parts of the Jurassic world.
“The Caribbean seaway ended up being an essential marine passage given that the mid Oxfordian, linking the Eastern and Western Tethys, playing an essential function in the marine faunal dispersal because the Late Jurassic in between Europe, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific,” they stated.
“This passage had a newest Triassic-Early Jurassic origins represented by global rift valleys which need to not be thought about part of the early Caribbean basin or the Gulf of Mexico per se, however were precursors found in west-central Pangea.”
“The El Cuajaní ichthyosaur contributes to the growing body of Tithonian ichthyosaur just recently found in the area and might add to a much better understanding of the biogeographic history of the group,” they concluded.
Their paper was released on February 6 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology
_____
Manuel Iturralde-Vinent et alA partial ichthyosaur (? Ophthalmosauridae) skeleton from the Tithonian (Upper Jurassic) of western Cuba. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontologyreleased online February 6, 2026; doi: 10.1080/ 02724634.2025.2609717
Find out more
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
