2024-04-18 19:41:00
Four years ago, an 11-year-old girl and her father discovered fossils on an English beach. Researchers 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, in fact, found a very large bone, reports The Guardian. Researchers analyzed the bone and announced that it belonged to a type of marine reptile known as an ichthyosaur. They also estimated that this creature from the Triassic era, which spanned from –251 to –200 million years ago, could have measured between 22 and 26 meters long.
Ichthyotitan severnensis, its real name, could be the largest marine reptile ever discovered. It rivals some large baleen whales living today. Back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, marine reptiles ruled the oceans. Ichthyosaurs lived for 160 million years before becoming extinct about 90 million years ago.
A bone located near the creature’s lower jaw
“It is quite remarkable to imagine that gigantic ichthyosaurs, the size of a blue whale, were roaming the oceans at the time when dinosaurs roamed the land in what is now the United Kingdom, 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 surangular, is a long, curved bone located at the top of the lower jaw, just behind the teeth. Researchers were able to reconstruct the appearance of Ichthyotitan using other representatives of its family, and it is very imposing.
published on April 18 at 9:41 p.m., Lilian Moy, 6Medias
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