Largest Marine Reptile Ever Discovered Found by 11-Year-Old Girl on Beach Walk

The discovery of the largest-known marine reptile fossil was made by an 11-year-old girl during a routine beach walk in southwest England, according to verified reports from Earth.com and corroborated by multiple scientific news outlets.

Ruby Reynolds and her father, Justin Reynolds, were fossil hunting along the coast near Blue Anchor in Somerset in late May 2020 when they uncovered fragments of a fossilized bone. Ruby found a piece twice as long as her father’s initial discovery — a four-inch fragment he described as “bigger than any piece of bone I’d ever found before.” The second piece, better preserved and half-buried in a mud slope, would later be identified as part of a lower jaw exceeding 6½ feet in length.

The fossil remains were examined by Dean Lomax, a paleontologist affiliated with the University of Bristol and the University of Manchester, who recognized similarities to a previously discovered ichthyosaur specimen from 2016. That earlier find, collected by local fossil hunter Paul de la Salle, had also been a surangular bone — a key component of the jaw — and when combined with Ruby’s discovery, allowed researchers to reconstruct a more complete picture of the creature.

The newly identified species was named Ichthyotitan severnensis, translating to “giant fish lizard from the Severn,” referencing both its immense size and the geological region where the fossils were found. The creature lived approximately 202 million years ago during the final stages of the Triassic Period, a time when much of present-day Britain was submerged under a warm, shallow sea inhabited by large marine predators.

Ichthyosaurs, though reptiles, evolved convergent traits with modern marine mammals such as whales, including live birth and full adaptation to oceanic life. They did not return to land and gave birth to live young, distinguishing them from many other reptilian lineages. As apex predators of their time, they dominated marine ecosystems before their lineage was wiped out in the Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction event.

The discovery highlights the role of amateur fossil hunters in contributing to paleontological science. Ruby’s find, made at age 11, prompted scientific analysis that confirmed the specimen represents the largest marine reptile ever known to exist — surpassing previous size estimates for ichthyosaurs and other ancient ocean dwellers.

No further details about the fossil’s excavation, preservation process, or ongoing research have been made available in the verified sources. The identification and naming of Ichthyotitan severnensis remain based on the jaw fragments discovered by Ruby and her father, along with comparative analysis of earlier Somerset finds.