Deep Down In The Abyss: The prehistoric 'Sea Monster' of the Mesozoic era
Introduction 'She sells seashells by the seashore'. This tongue twister was based on Mary Anning, a pioneering palaeontologist and fossil collector (Strauss, 2019). In the early 19th century, she was the first to discover what is now named Ichthyosaurus communis , meaning 'fish-lizard' (Mary-Claire Eylott, n.d). However, this genus was neither a fish nor a lizard. Scientists classify Ichthyosaurus communis as a marine reptile (Marek, 2015). Ichthyosaurus communis is a part of the order Ichthyosauria, which sits in the superorder of Ichthyopterygia (Fig.1). Ichthyosauria holds many records: possessing the largest eyes out of all living things ever to have existed (Motani, Rothschild and Wahl, 1999), being the first air breathing tetrapods with a fish-like body (Marek, 2015) and even