Ancient polar sea reptile fossil is oldest ever found in Southern Hemisphere

An international team of scientists has identified the oldest fossil of a sea-going reptile from the Southern Hemisphere — a nothosaur vertebra found on New Zealand’s South Island. 246 million years ago, at the beginning of the Age of Dinosaurs, New Zealand was located on the southern polar coast of a vast super-ocean called Panthalassa. ‘The nothosaur found in New Zealand is over 40 million years older than the previously oldest known sauropterygian fossils from the Southern Hemisphere.