2024-04-18 19:41:00
Four years ago, an 11-year-old girl and her father discovered fossils on an English beach. Scientists have announced that they belong to a marine reptile more than 200 million years old, the largest to have ever existed.
An 11-year-old British girl, Ruby Reynolds, and her father made a rather unique discovery in May 2020 on an English beach. They actually found a very large bone, reports say Guardian. Scientists analyzed the bone and announced that it belonged to a type of marine reptile known as an ichthyosaur. They also estimated that this Triassic creature, which spanned from -251 to -200 million years ago, might have been between 22 and 26 meters long.
Ichthyotitan severnensis, its real name, may be the largest marine reptile ever discovered. It rivals some large baleen whales alive today. When the dinosaurs ruled the earth, marine reptiles ruled the seas. Ichthyosaurs lived for 160 million years before becoming extinct around 90 million years ago.
A bone located near the creature’s lower jaw
“It is quite remarkable to imagine that giant ichthyosaurs, the size of a blue whale, roamed the seas at the time when the dinosaurs roamed the land of what is now Great Britain, during the Triassic period.”said paleontologist Dean Lomax.
Now 15, Ruby Reynolds has quickly been compared to Mary Anning, a famous 19th-century paleontologist who discovered ichthyosaur fossils when she was 13. The bone found, called the surangular, is a long, curved bone that sits at the top of the lower jaw, just behind the teeth. Scientists were able to reconstruct the appearance of Ichthyotitan using other representatives of the family, and it is very impressive.
published April 18 at 21.41, Lilian Moy, 6Medias
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