Herein we report the discovery of an ichthyosaur embryo from the Upper Member of the Sundance Formation (Oxfordian) of the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming. The specimen is the first known ichthyosaur embryo from the Upper Jurassic, and is the first Jurassic ichthyosaur embryo from North America. The embryo was discovered in close association with the abdomen of an articulated partial plesiosaur skeleton, and several lines of evidence support the interpretation of the embryo as plesiosaur stomach contents. The small size and extremely poor ossification of the embryo indicate that the animal was probably not a neonate. Although the taxonomic affinities of the fossil are unknown, the large ichthyosaurian (sensu stricto) Opthalmosaurus natans is the only known ichthyosaur from the Sundance Formation, and the embryo may belong to that taxon.
This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in O'Keefe, F. R., Street, H. P., Cavigelli, J. P., Socha, J. J., & O'Keefe, R. D. (2009). A plesiosaur containing an ichthyosaur embryo as stomach contents from the Sundance Formation of the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 29(4), 1306-1310, as published in the JOURNAL OF VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY, 2009, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1671/039.029.0403