A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth.
Researchers said on Wednesday (April 17) the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 72 and 85 feet (22-26 meters) long.
That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would rival some of the largest baleen whales alive today. The blue whale, considered the largest animal ever on the planet, can reach about 100 feet (30 meters) long.
Marine reptiles ruled the world's oceans when dinosaurs dominated the land. Ichthyosaurs, which evolved from terrestrial ancestors and prospered for about 160 million years before disappearing rou
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Run time: 04:17
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00:00.0
Thank you for watching!
00:30.0
And together, working with Paul and another couple of members of my team, we described Paul's bone in 2018 in a study as an unusual giant jaw bone, part of a serangula from right at the back of the jaw of an ichthyosaur.
00:45.6
But this ichthyosaur was probably enormous, potentially kind of blue whale sized, on the order of magnitude of about 20 to 26 meters long.
00:55.2
What we'd hoped for at the time was more complete remains.
01:00.0
And we kept our fingers crossed, and we hoped that that would happen.
01:05.5
Oh, that's just an exceptional find.
01:10.0
The preservation on it.
01:11.8
Yeah, it's very, very similar to rubies.
01:13.9
It's exactly the same.
01:14.9
Could you just turn it over slowly?
01:18.1
Yeah, please. Very slowly.
01:30.0
A few years later, until May 2020, when Justin and Ruby, father and daughter fossil hunters from Devon here in the UK, were walking on a beach a little bit further down the coast from where Paul had found his bone, and they discovered chunks of bone, which once again, were from the jaws of a giant ichthyosaur.
01:50.7
This time, an entirely different individual, but what Justin and Ruby had discovered were the same type of bone as what Paul had found previously.
02:00.0
And the fact that they come from a geologic time that was about 202 million years ago, this made them incredibly rare because this also means that this animal appears about 13 million years after the last giant ichthyosaurs that have been described with a name.
02:20.1
And based on that unique shape, various different structures, the fact that they're both right from the end of the Triassic period, about 202 million years ago.
02:30.0
supports our identification of something entirely new to science, which we've named as a new species called Ichthyotitan sevenensis.
03:00.0
I can't see what I'm looking at.
03:22.0
No other marine reptiles, and we can include turtles and crocodiles.
03:28.0
No other marine reptiles got as big as this.
03:30.0
Not as large as these animals did.
03:33.0
It's quite remarkable to think that gigantic blue whale-sized ichthyosaurs were swimming in the oceans around the time the dinosaurs were walking on land in what is now the UK during the Triassic period.
03:46.0
These jaw bones provide tantalizing evidence that perhaps one day, fingers crossed, a complete skull or a skeleton might be found.
04:00.0
Keep going, please.
04:06.0
Now look at the ends.
04:10.0
And the other end.
04:12.0
Very clay-y still on the ends, aren't they?
