A farm in England was the unlikely source of a Jurassic jackpot: A treasure trove of 183 million-year-old fossils.
On the outskirts of Gloucestershire in the Cotswolds, beneath soil that is currently trampled under the hooves of grazing cattle, researchers recently uncovered the fossilized remains of fish, giant marine reptiles called ichthyosaurs, squids, insects, and other ancient animals dating to the early part of the Jurassic period .
"The eyeball and socket were well preserved. Usually, with fossils, they're lying flat. But in this case, it was preserved in more than one dimension, and it looks like the fish is leaping out of the rock," Hollingworth told Live Science. Most of the fossils the Hollingworths and a team of scientists and specialists unearthed were located behind the farm's cowshed.
"When the fish died, they sank to the bottom of the seabed," said fossil marine reptile specialist Dean Lomax, a visiting scientist at the University of Manchester in the UK and a member of the excavation group.
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