Ichthyosaur fossil sheds new light on ancient reptile

Looks like ancient reptiles got deliveries from the stork. That's an amazingly inaccurate paraphrase of a recent study published on the journal PLOS ONE, which analyzed an ichthyosaur fossil. From National Geographic:

The 248-million-year-old fossil from the Mesozoic era (252 to 66 million years ago) reveals an ichthyosaur baby inside its mother (orange) and another stuck in her pelvis (yellow). A third embryo discovered nearby suggests it was stillborn; scientists believe the mother died during a difficult labor. The narrow, eel-like ichthyosaur belongs to the genus Chaohusaurus and is the oldest known species of the group. [...] It's not just the age of the Mesozoic-era discovery that is surprising; it's the shattering of the belief that ichthyosaurs—also dubbed sea monsters—gave birth in water, not on land. The scientists reached their conclusion because the fossil showed the offspring emerging head-first—a behavior found only in animals that give birth on land.

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