Mixosaurus Cornalianus

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Scientifically accurate model of Mixosaurus Cornalianus by Hibou soc. coop The model has been realized with the scientific supervision of Willy Guasti, scientific divulgator and youtuber. Description : Ichthyosaurs were a fascinating group of prehistoric animals that inhabited the primordial oceans; mistakenly treated as dinosaurs they were actually a group of marine reptiles. During the Triassic Period the ancestors of these creatures began to colonize the prehistoric seas, gradually becoming more and more specialized to aquatic life. In Italy, too, traces of this group of animals have been found: the fossils come from the so-called Besano formation, an area that extends between the southern Alps on the border between Italy and Switzerland, and that contains rocks formed in the Triassic period, in what had been a tropical lagoon environment. The Italian part of the site of Monte San Giorgio, in the province of Varese, known for its fossils since the second half of the nineteenth century, has been declared a UNESCO heritage site because of its high paleontological value. Just among the rocks of the Besano formation there are also the skeletons of an ancient ichthyosaur, the Mixosaurus cornalianus In 2020, a publication signed by a team of Italian paleontologists (Silvio Renesto, Cristiano dal Sasso, Fabio Fogliazza and Cinzia Ragni) described two practically complete specimens of this species, found in 1993. The findings were so well preserved that analyzing them with an electron microscope, it was possible to observe the traces left by the soft tissues, which allowed to reconstruct the exact shape of the dorsal fin and caudal fin. Not only that! This is, according to current knowledge, the most ancient reptile equipped with a dorsal fin. Indeed, in these specimens have been preserved in the fossil state part of the intestine and stomach, along with flaps of skin. The referencesof our model are the skeletal diagram with the reconstruction of the shape of the fins proposed in the study of 2020, as well as the updated model of the animal made for the Museum of Fossils of Besano by Scientificmodels.