By: Alana Zhang

When Ruby Reynold and her dad found a fossil on an English beach, They did not know it belonged to an 82-feet-long ichthyosaur that long ago swam in the dinosaur ages.

In 1811, Mary Anning, a 12 -year-old girl found a fossil on the beach that was close to her house. It was a dolphin-like ocean-dwelling reptile from when there were dinosaurs after two centuries far away, an 11-year-old named Ruby Reynolds found the same type of dinosaur bone.

Ms. Reynolds and her dad,who is named Justin Reynolds,have been finding fossils for 12 years close to their house in Braunton,England. On a family outing in May 2020 at the village of Blue Anchor, where they came across a huge piece of fossilized bone put on a rock. Then Ruby started searching the beach for more and finally found another piece that was much larger.

They took it home and began their research and they found:In close by Lilstock,fossil hunters found similar parts of a jaw that belonged to an ichthyosaur.

When Mr. Reynolds called the people,they joined the Reynolds family,then they started digging the mud with hovels,Finally half a bone after estimating they would have more than seven feet at the end.Taken together,the fossils from Blue Anchor and Lilstock showed them something special.”Having 2 examples of the same fossil that preserved all the same unusual things,”Dr.Lomax said .”That’s when it got really exciting .”

He and his co-authors of a paper describing the fossil in the journal PLOS One on Wednesday named it Ichthyotitan severnensis, the giant fish lizard of the Severn.