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The fossil \u2013 a lower jaw more than\u00a06\u00bd\u00a0feet long \u2013 promised a creature leagues beyond anything alive today. The find dated to around\u00a0202\u00a0million\u00a0years ago, slotting it into the turbulent final chapter of the Triassic Period<\/a>.<\/p>\n At that time, much of what is now Britain lay beneath a warm, shallow sea patrolled by meat\u2011eating giants. Their reign ended in a mass extinction, leaving only scattered bones to whisper their stories \u2013 until now.<\/p>\n Ruby and Ichthyotitan severnensis<\/p>\n Back in late\u00a0May\u00a02020, 11\u2011year\u2011old Ruby\u00a0Reynolds and her father, Justin, headed for the mudflats of Blue\u00a0Anchor, looking for fossils. <\/p>\n Justin spotted a four\u2011inch scrap of bone, \u201cbigger than any piece of bone I\u2019d ever found before,\u201d he recalls. <\/p>\n Ruby wandered on and unearthed a second fragment twice that size. \u201cIt was just sort of lying there,\u201d she says. \u201cI was just happy, really.\u201d Their excitement would soon ripple far beyond the shoreline.<\/p>\n Word reached paleontologist Dean\u00a0Lomax, who holds posts at both the University of Bristol<\/a> and the University of Manchester<\/a>. He recognized echoes of another Somerset specimen lifted in\u00a02016 by local collector Paul\u00a0de\u00a0la\u00a0Salle. <\/p>\n That earlier jaw fragment, called a surangular, came together from several chunks that, Lomax remembers, \u201cfit together perfectly like an ancient prehistoric jigsaw puzzle.\u201d<\/p>\n Ruby\u2019s discovery was eventually named Ichthyotitan severnensis, which literally translates to \u201cgiant fish lizard from the Severn.\u201d <\/p>\n Ichthyotitan severnensis was a true monster<\/p>\n The first bone\u2019s eroded edges left scientists yearning for more. \u201cIt suggests that it was from something unusual and exceedingly large,\u201d\u00a0Lomax says. <\/p>\n He and colleagues published a cautious description, but could not pin down the creature\u2019s identity. \u201cWhat we\u2019d hoped for \u2013 we kept our fingers crossed \u2013 we hoped that maybe more specimens would come to light in the future,\u201d he admits.<\/p>\n Ruby and Justin\u2019s beachside haul delivered exactly that. After they emailed photographs \u2013 \u201cHey, Dr.\u00a0Lomax \u2013 we think we\u2019ve found another one of your giant ichthyosaur jawbones\u201d\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the research team raced to Somerset. <\/p>\n \u201cOf course, they were quite right,\u201d Lomax says. \u201cThey correctly identified these sections of bone as belonging to an ichthyosaur.\u201d <\/p>\n Fresh collecting trips recovered still more pieces, leaving nearly two\u2011thirds of the jaw intact and in excellent shape.<\/p>\n Matching two huge jawbones<\/p>\n Comparison of the two Somerset jaws revealed striking similarities. Because both turned up in the same rock layer and displayed uncommon internal bone textures, the team concluded they belonged to one new species. <\/p>\n In a paper published in PLOS\u00a0ONE, they proposed that the full animal stretched roughly\u00a082\u00a0feet \u2013 \u201cgenuinely enormous, about the length of a blue whale,\u201d Lomax says.<\/p>\n Scale alone does not grant a place in the record books; scientists also scrutinized microscopic structures inside the bone. <\/p>\n These matched the odd pattern seen in other super\u2011sized ichthyosaurs<\/a>, nudging researchers to suggest these reptiles grew in a way unlike most of their scaly kin.<\/p>\n Whether Ichthyotitan severnensis belonged to the shastasaur group \u2013 the clade that once produced Triassic leviathans across the globe \u2013 remains uncertain until a complete skeleton surfaces.<\/p>\n Sizing up Ichthyotitan<\/p>\n The Somerset titan likely carried a lighter, more streamlined frame suited for open\u2011ocean cruising. Its jawbone alone outsizes a grown person by several feet. <\/p>\n If its proportions followed relatives such as Shonisaurus, the skull may have spanned over\u00a010\u00a0feet, with paddle\u2011shaped flippers stretching wider than a living\u2011room couch.<\/p>\n Growth to such dimensions suggests a sea rich in food and free of bigger predators. Massive schools of squid\u2011like cephalopods thrived in Triassic waters, offering a banquet to long\u2011roaming hunters. <\/p>\n Stable\u2011isotope evidence from other ichthyosaur bones hints at warm\u2011blooded metabolisms, which, paired with live birth and sleek bodies, let them fill whale\u2011like niches long before mammals took the plunge.<\/p>\n Life in the Triassic was incredible<\/p>\n The Triassic often flies under the radar next to the Jurassic\u2019s celebrity dinosaurs, yet biomechanist Kelsey\u00a0Stilson calls it \u201ca really weird time.\u201d <\/p>\n Continents had only just fused into Pangaea<\/a>, monsoon\u2011driven climates swung from drought to deluge, and both early dinosaurs and mammals were fresh on the scene. <\/p>\n \u201cThere were things that we can\u2019t even possibly imagine in the past,\u201d\u00a0Stilson adds. \u201cBut we can get little hints, and this is one little hint at this larger picture of evolution on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n That broader picture shows ichthyosaurs rising fast after the end\u2011Permian mass extinction, then peaking in size just before the next cataclysm. <\/p>\n \u201cNo marine reptile ever reached such gigantic sizes ever again,\u201d\u00a0Lomax notes. Later Jurassic and Cretaceous ichthyosaurs shrank, perhaps pushed aside by changing oceans and by the emergence of other reptilian predators such as pliosaurs<\/a> and mosasaurs<\/a>.<\/p>\n Whales replaced Ichthyotitan severnensis<\/p>\n The last ichthyosaurs disappeared about\u00a094\u00a0million\u00a0years ago, vacating the top spot in marine food webs. <\/p>\n That gap lingered until hoofed mammals ventured back to sea some\u00a050\u00a0million\u00a0years ago, setting whales on their own path to titanic proportions. <\/p>\n The repeat story \u2013 big fish\u2011shaped predators evolving from land\u2011going ancestors \u2013 highlights how evolutionary solutions recur when similar ecological opportunities arise.<\/p>\n Modern blue whales now stretch beyond\u00a0100\u00a0feet and can weigh\u00a0180\u00a0tons, yet, length for length, they share the open ocean\u2019s realm with Ichthyotitan in the fossil archives. <\/p>\n Their stories highlight the ocean\u2019s capacity to nurture behemoths<\/a> when food is ample and competition sparse.<\/p>\n What happens next?<\/p>\n Somerset\u2019s cliffs erode a little more each winter. Storms tear at ancient mudstones, exposing new fossils overnight. <\/p>\n \u201cThis research has been ongoing for almost eight years. It is quite remarkable to think that gigantic, blue whale\u2011sized ichthyosaurs were swimming in the oceans around what was the UK during the Triassic Period,\u201d Lomax concluded.<\/p>\n \u201cThese jawbones provide tantalizing evidence that perhaps one day a complete skull or skeleton of one of these giants might be found. You never know.\u201d<\/p>\n Beachcombers like Ruby and Justin now scan those shores with renewed purpose. Their lucky strike reminds us that scientific breakthroughs sometimes hide in plain sight, waiting for curious eyes and a little persistence. <\/p>\n The sea claimed Ichthyotitan severnensis long before humans walked Europe, yet its story shows that even after millions of years, a coast\u2011side ramble can rewrite natural history.<\/p>\n The full study was published in the journal PLOS ONE<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Strolling a familiar beach and stumbling upon a relic from the age of dinosaurs sounds like pure fantasy,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-474465","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Photograph](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Ichthyotitan-severnensis_largest-marine-reptile_jawbone-comparison_credit-Dean-Lomax_1s.webp.webp\")
<\/a>Photograph of the nearly complete giant jawbone, along with a comparison with the 2018 bone (middle and bottom) found by Paul de la Salle. Click image to enlarge. Credit: Dr. Dean Lomax<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Ichthyotitan-severnensis_largest-marine-reptile_illustration_credit-Gabriel-Ugueto_1s.webp.webp\")
<\/a>A giant pair of swimming Ichthyotitan severnensis. Click image to enlarge. Credit: Gabriel Ugueto<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Ichthyotitan-severnensis_largest-marine-reptile_beached_credit-Sergey-Krasovskiy_1s.webp.webp\")
<\/a>A washed-up Ichthyotitan severnensis carcass on the beach. Click image to enlarge. Credit: Sergey Krasovskiy.<\/p>\n