Ichthyosaur embryos outside the mother body: not due to carcass explosion but to carcass implosion

Some well-preserved ichthyosaurs found in the Early Jurassic Posidonienschiefer Formation at Holzmaden (Germany) have puzzled palaeontologists for a long time: their skeletons are exceptionally well preserved and their bones are almost all in situ, but the bones of their embryos are scattered, partly beyond the body limits of the mother. This has been explained initially by bottom currents and later by a displacement of already disarticulated embryos during the expulsion of putrefaction gases through the disrupted body wall of the mother. It was postulated recently that this latter hypothesis is not tenable. It is argued here that both hypotheses are not tenable in their original form, but that carcass implosion may explain the various enigmatic features.

• Publication year

  2013

• Venue

  Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments

• Publication date

  2013-01-24

• Fields of study

  Biology, Geology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1007/S12549-012-0112-6
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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