Polished Slab Of Ichthyosaur Vertebrae & Ribs

This is a very interested piece, it's a polished slab from the Posidonia Shale of Southern Germany. There is numerous bones of a 183 million year old Ichthyosaur exposed including several articulated vertebrae and ribs. The slab itself is 13" by 6.7", very solid and displays well on the included stand. The polishing allows for the internal cell structure of the bones be seen.

One obvious question is why would a slab containing Ichthyosaur bones be polished? The Posidonia Shale has been commercially mined for centuries and is often cut and polished to make table tops, flooring, hearths, etc. One can assume that the fossils were found while this hard shale was being cut and polished for other uses.



Ichthyosaurs ("Fish Lizard") was a giant marine reptile which thrived from much of the Mesozoic era. They evolved in the mid Triassic from a group of unidentified land reptiles which transition back into the water. This line evolved in parallel to the ancestors of todays dolphins and whales, something known as convergent evolution.