Punctured Vertebra Confirms Pliosaurid Predation on Ichthyosaurs with Implications for Thalassophonean Feeding Behavior in the Upper Jurassic of Europe

The Yale Peabody Museum contains an underappreciated assortment of marine reptile fossils from the Jurassic of Europe. We describe one such fossil, comprising two individually cataloged specimens (YPM VP 000340 and YPM VP 065978), which Othniel Charles Marsh received from Europe (possibly from Alfred Nicholson Leeds) in the late 1800s. The fossil is an ichthyosaur vertebra (YPM VP 000340) punctured through the notochordal pit by a large pliosaur tooth (YPM VP 065978). Morphological considerations, aided by high-resolution microcomputed tomography scanning and three-dimensional image-stacking, enable us to assign the tooth to a Pliosaurus Owen 1841 from the Late Jurassic. Subsequent stratigraphic considerations lead us to assign the vertebra to Ophthalmosauria Motani 1999. The fossil therefore confirms a direct trophic interaction between these taxa and may shed new light on the feeding and prey manipulation behavior of macrocarnivorous pliosaurids.