By: Kevin Lee

On the shores of Blue Anchor, the second fossil of the largest marine reptile known to man was discovered by just an 11-year-old girl.

In late May of 2020, Ruby Reynolds and her father, Justin Reynolds, went to Blue Anchor, Somerset, England for fossil hunting. Ruby Reynolds described the bone as “just sort of lying there” once she found it. Once the pair found out just how valuable their cache was, they contacted Dr. Dean Lomax, University of Manchester’s paleontologist. Dr. Lomax recognized the fossils as belonging to a massive ichthyosaur.

Ichthyosaurs lived during the Triassic period. The fossil Ruby and Justin Reynolds found were gigantic. According to NPR News, “Lomax, Ruby and Justin Reynolds, and their colleagues describe this new species of ichthyosaur, Ichthyotitan severnensis, as roughly 82 feet long. That’s twice the length of a school bus.”

Four years before Ruby and Justin Reynolds found the ichthyotitan fossil, Paul de la Salle, a fossil hunter, found a jawbone fossil at Somerset. Lomax and his team of colleagues figured out that the fossils found by de la Salle and Ruby Reynolds belonged to the exact same species.

Many paleontologists were convinced that the identification of the fossils were indeed a massive ichthyosaur’s jaw, including Dr. Nick Fraser. However, he believed that calling it a new species wasn’t right. He said, “For me it is a bit too incomplete for that.”

Currently, we only have two bones of what may be the biggest marine reptile. It is unclear whether this should be considered a new species, but we are one step closer to figuring out what the species looked like.