Nevada

Kirk Krack of Performance Freediving International gives a talk on the high-tech underwater habitat deep.com being developed in the UK. Diving Talks 2024. Photo by Peter Symes.

Autumn Trade Shows: Diving Talks and the DEMA Show 2024

Diving Talks

We will take them in chronological order. Diving Talks, held in late October, has quietly become one of my top favourites. This year’s event was the fourth in a row, and since I have reported extensively on the previous editions here in the magazine, which you can easily go back in the archive and fish out this time, I will limit myself to an update and not repeat all the premises and characteristics of this unique event.

3D-model image of the Shonisaurus popularis fossil bed at Quarry 2 in Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park, Nevada. Fossilised bones have been color-coded, with each color corresponding to a different skeleton.
3D-model image of the Shonisaurus popularis fossil bed at Quarry 2 in Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park, Nevada. Fossilised bones have been color-coded, with each color corresponding to a different skeleton.

Fossil bed in national forest in Nevada may have been breeding ground for ichthyosaurs

In the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in Nevada, there is a fossil bed in which many ichthyosaurs (Shonisaurus popularis) have been found petrified in stone.

Over the years, there has been speculation that they had perished in a mass stranding incident or due to a nearby algal bloom. While these were possible, there had not been strong evidence to support these theories.