Giant Fish-Lizard Discovered: The Largest Marine Reptile Ever Known!

A marine reptile believed to be the largest that ever swam in the world’s waters has been identified by researchers, reported by BBC and National Geographic. The creature, which was almost 202 million years ago at the end of the Triassic period or the age of dinosaurs, was about two buses long and lived in the sea.

Fossil hunters discovered its jawbone in 2016 on a beach in Somerset, UK, and in 2020, another similar fossilized jawbone was found by a father and daughter. Researchers evaluated that the fossils are of two giant fish lizards known as Ichthyotitan severens.

The size of the jawbones – one over a meter long and the other two meters long – suggests that the whole animal was about 25 meters long or around blue whale size. However, more evidence is needed to confirm its size such as the entire skeleton and skull of the animal.

Paleontologist Dean Lomax from the University of Bristol for BBC says that it is not as huge as any mass extinction Ichthyotitan severensis since then, but they were top predators of their time. All previous giant fish-lizard fossils have been found in older rocks in Asia and North America, which leads researchers to believe that these new fossils belong to a new species.