© Sergey Krasovsky
Scientists in the United Kingdom have found the remains of what may be the largest reptile that ever lived.
A fossilized piece of the animal’s backbone was found on a beach in Somerset, England. That happened when fossil hunter Paul de la Salle walked there with his wife Carol, looking for interesting finds. In 2018, after a discussion with lead researcher Dean Lomax, they published their first findings. Their research got a big boost when father and daughter found a similar fossil four years later on a beach 10 kilometers away.
Research has shown that these are fossil remains of two large ichthyosaur reptiles, which would have lived among the dinosaurs 202 million years ago and were 25 meters long. That’s two buses in a row.
“Based on the size of the vertebrae, one of which is one meter long and the other two meters long, we can conclude that the whole animal would have been around the length of a blue whale ,” said Dean Lomax, the University paleontologist. University of Bristol who was the main author of the scientific paper.
Lomax says more evidence is needed to determine the exact size of the reptile. A complete skull or skeleton would be a step in the right direction.
Dean Lomax next to Ruby and Justin Reynolds (who discovered the second backbone) and Paul de la Salle (who discovered the first backbone). – © Dean Lomax
2024-04-18 06:59:05
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