Fossil of ancient sea reptile is oldest found in Southern Hemisphere [Video]

A 246 million-year-old reptile fossil discovered by scientists in New Zealand has been identified as the oldest marine reptile fossil found in the Southern Hemisphere, according to a Swedish museum. 

The vertebra of a nothosaur, a type of Sauropterygian, an extinct aquatic reptile that lived during the Triassic period at the dawn of the dinosaurs, was first excavated from a boulder in 1978, but wasn’t identified until recently, according to a release from Uppsala University’s Museum of Evolution in Sweden. 

Almost 252 million years ago, reptiles invaded the seas following a catastrophic mass extinction that led to the age of the dinosaurs. 

“Evidence for this evolutionary milestone has only been discovered in a few places around the world: on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen, northwestern North America and southwestern China,” the university …