What: Lower jawbone fossil
Whom: Ichthyosaur marine animal
Where: United Kingdom
- According to a study published in the Plus One journal, a lower jawbone fossil found on United Kingdom’s’ English beach belongs to one of the biggest marine animals on record, a type of seagoing reptile called an ichthyosaur.
- Fossil collector Paul de la Salle has found the bone in 2016 at Lilstock on England’s Somerset coast along the Bristol Channel.
- The scientists have estimated the length of the animal up to 85 feet (26 meters) long – approaching the size of a blue whale.
- This ichthyosaur, which appears to be the largest marine reptile ever discovered, lived 205 million years ago at the end of the Triassic Period, dominating the oceans just as dinosaurs were becoming the undisputed masters on land. The bone, called a surangular, was part of its lower jaw.
- The researchers estimated the animal’s length by comparing this surangular to the same bone in the largest ichthyosaur skeleton ever found, a species called Shonisaurus sikanniensis from British Columbia that was 69 feet (21 meters) long.
- As per the report, Ichthyosaurs swam the world’s oceans from 250 million years ago to 90 million years ago, preying on squid and fish. The biggest were larger than other huge marine reptiles of the dinosaur age like pliosaurs and mosasaurs. Only today’s filter-feeding baleen whales are larger. The blue whale, up to about 98 feet (30 meters) long, is the biggest animal alive today and the biggest marine animal ever.
