Malawania


Malawania is an extinct genus of basal thunnosaur ichthyosaur known from the middle Early Cretaceous of Iraq. Malawania was first named by Valentin Fischer, Robert M. Appleby, Darren Naish, Jeff Liston, Riding, J. B., Brindley, S. and Pascal Godefroit in 2013 and the type species is Malawania anachronus. It is unusual as it is much more primitive than other Cretaceous Ichthyosaurs, being most closely related to Icthyosaurus itself from the Late Triasic and Early Jurassic, over 70 million years earlier.

Discovery

The holotype and only known specimen was discovered in 1952 by British petroleum geologists D. M. Morton, F. R. S. Henson, R. J. Wetzel and L. C. F. Damesin while working in Chia Gara, Armadia in Iraqi Kurdistan. The slab was being used to dam a small river and was part of a mule track. It was then transported back to the UK and donated to the Natural History Museum in 1959. Robert M. Appleby would study the specimen for many years until his death in 2004, but never published a paper, one manuscript submitted to Paleontology in 1979 was rejected due to the uncertain provenance of the specimen.

Phylogeny

Below is a cladogram modified from Fischer et. al., 2013.