These specimens (including G.00114 and G.00116) were previously identified by J B Delair (a past curator of the museum) as Stenosaurus sp. But they were reclassified as Metriorhynchine in 2014 by Lorna Steel of the Natural History Museum and Mark Young, University of Edinburgh.
Unfortunately the Accessions Register tells us next to nothing about it, it’s provenance is simply described as “ex Damon Coll’n purch’d 1889”. It’s also described as Kimmeridgian or Oxfordian in age, but as we have no record of where it actually came from, Delair will presumably have derived the stratigraphic identification by inspection of the object rather than from any source data.
The other big problem is that all three specimens are suffering from pyrite decay; iron sulphide within the bones starts to oxidise in contact with the air and in doing so, causes the bone to slowly expand and start to break up. This is the worse suffering specimen and urgent steps are required to conserve it……. watch this space.
Find out more on the reptiles pages.