Mesozoic marine reptiles from Spitsbergen and their ecosystems

Abstract

In the Mesozoic seas, the apex predators were reptiles. From the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, the Spitsbergen Mesozoic Research Group has excavated numerous well preserved marine reptile skeletons in order to understand the biology of these animals and the environment they lived in. The work of eleven field seasons has made this one of the largest and most productive palaeontological research projects in the high Arctic world‐wide. The initial eight seasons focused on one of the richest occurrences of Late Jurassic—earliest Cretaceous (c. 150–139 Ma) marine reptiles in the world, and nearly sixty specimens have been collected, together with a diverse assemblage of invertebrates, some of which are associated with methane seeps. The last three seasons were spent investigating events further back in time, as Spitsbergen preserves the remains from some of the first marine reptile radiations in the wake of the most devastating extinction in the history of the Earth, at the Permian–Triassic boundary (c. 252 Ma).