Malawania

Malawania is an extinct genus of basal thunnosaurian ichthyosaur that lived during the middle Early Cretaceous in what is now Iraq. The type and only known species is M. anachronus, first described in 2013 on the basis of a partial skeleton. It is unusual as it is much more primitive than other Cretaceous ichthyosaurs, being most closely related to Ichthyosaurus from the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic, over 70 million years earlier than Malawania, with all other known ichthyosaurs from the Late Jurassic onwards belonging to the family Ophthalmosauridae.