One of the world's most significant finds of marine reptile fossils from Cretaceous period

Their results were published in the journal Geological Society of America Bulletin.

In the southern summer of 2004, in Torres del Paine National Park in Patagonia near Chile's southern tip, glaciologists stumbled upon the skeletal remains of ichthyosaurs, or fish-lizards, probably exposed just a few years earlier as the Patagonian glacier receded. Prof. Stinnesbeck and Prof. Frey as well as scientists in Chile have spent the last few years studying this new and scientifically rich site. In three expeditions the German-Chilean team of experts uncovered more than 40 virtually complete skeletons of adult and juvenile ichthyosaurs, and even embryos, as well as ammonites, belemnites, bivalves, bony fishes and plant remains. "This concentration is unique for Chile and South America, making the fossil site significant internationally," explains the researcher from Heidelberg University's Institute of Earth Sciences.

According to the German-Chilean research team, the fish-lizard lived and hunted along the northeastern edge of a deep sea that then separated the Antarctic continent from Patagonia. Adults and juveniles hunted in groups in an underwater canyon rich with squid and small fish, their most important prey. As the continent gradually broke apart, earthquakes or avalanches on the steep slope occasionally unleashed devastating mudflows that sucked everything in their path down with them, including the marine reptiles. "The air-breathing fish-lizards became disoriented in the turbidity currents. They were sucked down hundreds of metres into the deep ocean," says Prof. Stinnesbeck. "The fine sediment that was swept along immediately entombed the dead or dying animals."