After 1,500 man-hours of digging, the team unearthed the stunningly preserved skeleton. The ichthyosaur’s backbone was still in more or less a continuous line, and its left forefin kept the shape it had in life. (Find out about a baby sea monster fossil that was found preserved inside its mother.)

Guntupalli V.R. Prasad, a paleontologist with India’s University of Delhi who studies dinosaur-era vertebrates, says that the find came as a surprise. “I did not do much research on the vertebrate fossils of this region earlier, as it was considered to yield very few vertebrate fossils,” he says.

Prasad quickly realized the magnitude of the find. Not only is the fossil the most complete Indian ichthyosaur ever found, it’s also the first from the Jurassic period recovered in the country. All previous finds are about 50 million years younger and consist only of isolated teeth or poorly preserved vertebrae, Prasad says.

Tough Prey

When the ichthyosaur lived, this region of India was covered by a tropical sea, which the 16-foot-long reptile prowled for its meals. Its cracked, worn teeth imply that it was eating tough prey such as armored fish and ammonites, spiral-shelled mollusks that resembled today’s nautiluses.

The team also found that the Indian ichthyosaur is closely related to group members found farther north—evidence of sea monster globalization.