It has been over 200 years since Mary and Joseph Anning first discovered a remarkable new kind of animal on the Jurassic Coast. Now over 100 species have been described and named from all over the world and many spectacular finds revisited to give new insight into the diversity, evolution, and extinction of these remarkable reptiles. New specimens from the Early Triassic of China are expanding our knowledge of early ichthyosaur evolution and relationships, European finds illuminate a major bottleneck in their diversity, and global surveys show their final heyday and demise in the mid-Cretaceous. Moreover the place of ichthyosaurs within their ecosystems and how Mesozoic ocean ecosystems begun to be more like the present has been of particular recent interest. My research has covered ichthyosaur interrelationships, sensory anatomy, and evolutionary rates, part of a new wave of research into this old group. In this talk I’ll present a summary state of the art of ichthyosaurology, as well as prospects for the next two centuries

Presenter Dr Ben Moon, University of Bristol