The two-meter jawbone belonged to a fish lizard that could be as long as two buses.
Researchers have identified perhaps the largest marine reptile that ever swam in the world's waters, reported BBC and National Geographic.
A creature about the length of two buses lived in the Sea almost 202 million years ago at the end of the Triassic period, or the age of dinosaurs.
A fossil hunter found its jawbone in 2016 on a beach in Somerset, UK. In 2020, father and daughter found a similar fossilized jawbone in the area.
The researchers evaluated in his reportthat the fossils are of two giant fish lizards viz On Ichthyotitan severens.
“Based on the size of the jaw bones – one over a meter long and the other two meters long, we can conclude that the whole animal was about 25 meters long, or about the length of a blue whale,” says the paleontologist who wrote the study Dean Lomax From the University of Bristol for the BBC.
However, more evidence is needed to confirm the size, such as the entire skeleton and skull of the animal, he adds.
None the fish lizard has not been as huge as the mass extinction of Ichthyotitan severensis after, Lomax states.
The extinct fish lizards were the top predators of the seas, the killer whales of their time.
All previous giant fish-lizard fossils have been found in older rocks in Asia and North America, strengthening suspicions that the giant jawbones found in Britain belong to a new species.
“The new fossils are from the very late Triassic period, which is known to be a black box for the Ichthyosaur fossil series,” says the paleontologist involved in the study Neil Kelley for National Geographic.
An artist's view of the Ichthyotitan severens fish lizard.
A fish lizard washed up on the seashore in the photos made by the artist.
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