Overview
- Researchers formally named the species Xiphodracon goldencapensis in a paper published October 10 in Papers in Palaeontology, led by Dean Lomax with Judy Massare and Erin Maxwell.
- The near-complete fossil was discovered in 2001 at Golden Cap on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast by collector Chris Moore and later entered the Royal Ontario Museum collection.
- Three‑dimensional preservation includes a skull with a huge eye socket, a long sword‑like snout and needle‑like teeth, plus a previously unrecorded prong‑bearing lacrimal bone.
- At roughly three meters long, the specimen likely preyed on fish and squid, with a dark rib‑cage mass interpreted as possible stomach contents from the Pliensbachian interval.
- Pathologies in limb bones and teeth and bite damage to the skull point to injury in life and probable death from a larger ichthyosaur, and the ROM plans to put the skeleton on display.