An 11-year-old girl in England has made a historic record

In 2020, the young Ruby ReynoldsJust 11 years old, and her father, Justin, discovered the pieces of the jaw during a walk on Blue Anchor Beach in the United Kingdom. One of the biggest dinosaurs that ever lived.

However, after a recent study was published, the finding may be even more surprising PLOS One The animal was described as the largest reptile of its species discovered to date.

According to The Guardian, the fossil is an ichthyosaur, A Prehistoric marine reptiles They lived alongside the dinosaurs at the end of the Triassic period, about 202 million years ago. The species was named by researchers as Ichthyotitan severnensis – means “Giant Severn Fish Lizard” [um rio do Reino Unido]”.

“This giant marine reptile may be the largest marine reptile to have been systematically described,” said Dr. Dean LomaxPalaeontologist and Associate Editor of Research at the University of Bristol.

“Of course we have to be careful with these estimates because we're dealing with giant bone fragments,” he adds. “However, simple measurement is generally used to estimate size, especially when comparative material is scarce.”

However, that particular model attracts attention because of its addition Estimated size is 25 metersIt is approximately the size of the present-day blue whale, the largest extant animal. He was still growing. This size, in addition to other obvious characteristics different from other ichthyosaurs, further strengthens the hypothesis that this may be a new species.

Another discovery?

Dean LomaxThe fossil, discovered by an 11-year-old girl, had already been discovered in 2016 by an excavator of a jaw from another ichthyosaur that, at the time, piqued his interest because it appeared to be a previously undescribed species. Later, after the team collected fossil fragments from the 2020 discovery, they realized that both animals came from. Same species.

“When my team described the first specimen in 2018, it showed unusual features that suggested it might represent something new. However, we refrained from naming it as it was incomplete and partially eroded,” he said. Lomax Most recently Guardian.

Having two examples with similar features of the same bone from the same geographic time zone helps us identify something new, especially since these two bones appear about 13 million years after the name of their last geographic relatives. , he adds.