“We compared it with these Aust bones, and as soon as I saw it in person, my jaw just hit the floor,” Lomax says. ![]() The scientists realized these pieces also belonged to giant ichthyosaurs-and possibly to ones even bigger than the newly identified animal. ![]() Some collected as early as 1850, these fragments had long been interpreted to be the limb or other bones of terrestrial dinosaurs, but this never quite made sense. Lomax says the discovery has led them to reinterpret a whole series of isolated bones found near the village of Aust in Gloucestershire, England. (Paleontologists also recently found a remarkably complete 16-foot ichthyosaur in India.) Scaling up the animal’s full body gave the team their 85-foot size estimate. Comparing the new fossil to the same bone in the jaw of Shonisaurus revealed that the new bone is 25 percent bigger. Lomax and Massare travelled to Alberta, Canada, to examine the much more complete fossil of Shonisaurus sikanniensis, a 69-foot-long ichthyosaur found in 2004. Based on the size of the bone, the scientists think this ichthyosaur was bigger than any previously known to science. and Judy Massare at SUNY Brockport in New York.įurther searching revealed five fossil pieces that fitted together to form a 3.2-foot-long bone, which the scientists identified as being from the lower jaw of an ichthyosaur. Suspecting it might be an ichthyosaur, he sent images to marine reptile experts Dean Lomax at the University of Manchester in the U.K. Self-taught fossil hunter and study coauthor Paul de la Salle was combing the beach at Lilstock, Somerset, in May 2016 when he found a large and puzzling chunk of fossil bone. ![]() (See a 13-foot-long Jurassic ichthyosaur found in Scotland.) How did paleontologists find it? Most ichthyosaurs were much smaller than the newly discovered creature-several species in the genus Ichthyosaurus also found in the U.K.
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