Yes! That was one of the things mentioned in the programme. Fiann and I talk a bit about ichthyosaurs giving birth to live young in the recent Palaeocast episode here: https://www.palaeocast.com/ichthyosaurs/

We have many fossils showing ichthyosaurs with unborn young preserved inside them. Many of these come from the rocks around Stuttgart in Sw Germany. It’s seems that this may have been a hotbed for pregnant ichthyosaurs to visit. Because of the effort of developing young inside the body, there were many stresses placed on the mother: getting enough food for herself and the young, keeping out of the way of predators when the body has become much heavier, even things like breathing and blood flow would be affected. Therefore it’s not entirely surprising that we do get many pregnant ichthyosaur fossils if there were once lots of ichthyosaurs there.

One specimen that features in the programme appears to show an ichthyosaur in the act of being born. At the time of birth just about the mother’s exertion is going into expelling the young. Sometimes this just can’t be done, and eventually the mother becomes exhausted and may not be able to swim to the surface to breathe. Ichthyosaurs are air breathers. In this case the mother and young both die and sink to the sea floor to be fossilised.

I have heard the suggestion that with this specimen, the young ichthyosaur may not have been in the process of being born, but may have been pushed out by gases as the carcass rots. This is a compelling argument, but given that the bones of mother and infants have not been disrupted or scattered, it suggests that the infant may well have been in the birth canal at death and probably being born.

Thanks for the confirmation. Strange that they haven’t followed through on this. Makes me suspect that they might have discovered a terminal flaw in their methodology that invalidated their conclusion.

Hi Paul,

To the best of my knowledge, there has been no more come from this in press. I’ll admit that I haven’t been keeping too close an eye on it, but having done a Google scholar search, I can’t find anything more.