A Late Triassic dinosaur bone, offshore Norway

Abstract

Mesozoic reptiles are known from several localities on Svalbard and from one locality on the Norwegian mainland (Heintz 1964). The former are of Triassic and Jurassic age and include ichthyosaurs and Jurassic plesiosaurs. These are described in the early works by Hulke (1873) and Wiman (1914), but also from more recently work by Persson (1962) and Worsley & Heintz (1977) (for a historical review see Heintz 1964 and Nakrem et al. 2004). Dinosaur tracks are known from several Early Cretaceous localities on Spitsbergen (Lapparent 1960, 1962; Edwards et al. 1978). On the mainland one partially complete ichthyosaur has been described from the Late Jurassic of Andoya (Orvig 1953; Dalland 1980; Nordborg et al. 1997). As a result of offshore drilling, several bone fragments of plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs have been found in cores. However, these finds have only been summarily described (Heintz & Saether 1999).