It’s on for young and old as schoolgirl finds giant fossil

Ruby Reynolds was just 11 when she found part of a 200 million-year-old ichthyosaur’s jawbone on a Somerset beach — a discovery that has made her a published scientist.

Ruby Reynolds and her father Justin with, left, Dean Lomax, who led the team studying the fossils, and Paul de la Salle, who had previously discovered a bone from the same species

An English schoolgirl has been praised by scientists for finding an “astonishing” fossil from one of the largest creatures ever to have lived.

Ruby Reynolds was 11 when she made the discovery on the beach at Blue Anchor, a village in Somerset. She and her father, Justin, were walking along the sand when they saw three pebbles that somebody had perched on top of a boulder.

However, one of the three was not a pebble: it was part of a fossilised bone from an enormous ichthyosaur, a carnivorous marine reptile that lived in the age of the dinosaurs about 202 million years ago. It is estimated to have measured about 25m from nose to tail, making it as long as a blue whale.

Having recognised that they had found a fossil, Ruby began hunting for others – and soon spotted a much larger piece of a gigantic jawbone. The discoveries were made in 2020, but she and her father were sworn to secrecy while the fossils were studied by a team led by Dean Lomax of the University of Manchester.

Now, at the age of 15, Ruby is the co-author of a scientific study in which the new species is formally described for the first time. It has been named Ichthyotitan severnensis, meaning “giant fish lizard of the Severn”.

“The size of the bones is really impressive,” said Marc Jones, curator of fossil reptiles at the Natural History Museum, who was not involved with the discovery. “It clearly represents one of the largest marine reptiles known.”

Nick Fraser, a specialist in vertebrate palaeontology at National Museums Scotland, agreed. “The size of it is quite extraordinary,” he said. The creature lived at a time when the Earth was warmer, with no polar ice caps. What is now Britain would have been further south, roughly where north Africa now lies.

The nearly complete giant jawbone, along with a comparison with the 2018 bone (middle and bottom) found by Paul de la Salle

Dr Fraser said he had been “delighted” to learn about Ruby’s involvement. “I hope this is inspiring,” he said. “Science shouldn’t be a mystery; it’s something that people should get involved in.”

One bone from the same species had been found before, by Paul de la Salle, a veteran fossil collector. He discovered it in 2016 further along the coast at Lilstock. That fragment of jaw was described in a study in 2018, but the species had not been named until now. Ruby and her father recognised that their fossil was similar and flagged it to the team of the earlier paper.

Dr Lomax said: “I was highly impressed that Ruby and Justin correctly identified the discovery as another enormous jawbone from an ichthyosaur.

“They recognised that it matched the one we described in 2018. I asked them whether they would like to join my team to study and describe this fossil, including naming it. They jumped at the chance. For Ruby, especially, she is now a published scientist who not only found but also helped to name a type of gigantic prehistoric reptile. There are probably not many 15-year-olds who can say that. A Mary Anning (the pioneering palaeontologist) in the making, perhaps.”

Ruby said: “It was so cool to discover part of this gigantic ichthyosaur. I am very proud to have played a part in a scientific discovery like this.”

Jimmy Waldron, another co-author of the study, said: “Ichthyosaurs are prehistoric marine reptiles with long bodies, flipper-like fins and long, fluked tails. Some look like lizards with flippers or dolphins, others more closely resemble whales, but they are all reptiles.”

He added: “Ichthyotitan boasted a huge, tapered jaw that helped it swim gracefully through the seas over future-England. “Inside its mouth, dozens of grooved, pointed teeth helped it to catch its favourite meals, which were likely to have been squid-like creatures, fish and other swimming reptiles.”

The fossil has been described in the journal PLOS One.

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