About 1,800 years ago, a fossilized ichthyosaur vertebra was picked up from a beach in Roman Britain and later discarded in a pit. Researchers report this as the earliest known case of intentional collection of such a marine reptile fossil, according to a study in Britannia.
The bone was unearthed in 2024 during excavations at the former Essex County Hospital site in Colchester, once the first Roman provincial capital in Britain. It lay in a pit alongside items such as possible cat bones, a horse tooth, pottery fragments and a Roman ligula spoon, all dated to the second century AD.
Analysis of the attached rock indicates the fossil originated from the east Kent coast between Folkestone and Hythe, an area with Roman quarrying activity that supplied building stone to Colchester.
Ichthyosaurs were dolphin-like reptiles that lived in Mesozoic seas. The find links Roman Britain to the later work of 19th-century fossil collector Mary Anning. Scholars suggest the vertebra may have been kept either as a mythological relic or simply out of curiosity, though its exact purpose in the pit remains unclear.
A comparable collected plesiosaur fossil from Roman Britain was previously found in Cambridge, hinting that more examples may exist in eastern England.
