For the first time, researchers have identified blubber, and other soft tissue, preserved in an Early Jurassic ichthyosaur. The new interpretation of the 180-million-year-old fossil suggests that the extinct marine reptiles were warm-blooded.

Ichthyosaurs swam the Mesozoic Era seas and were roughly contemporary with dinosaurs. They are often compared with modern toothed whales, particularly porpoises (though at least one ichthyosaur species attained blue whale-like size). Many paleontolog