An 11-year-old unearthed fossils of the largest known marine reptile : Short Wave

Sergey Krasovskiy

When the dinosaurs walked the Earth, massive marine reptiles swam. Among them, a species of Ichthyosaur that measured over 80 feet long.

Today, we look into how a chance discovery by a father-daughter duo of fossil hunters furthered paleontologist's understanding of the "giant fish lizard of the Severn sea." Currently, it is the largest marine reptile known to scientists.

Read more about this specimen in the study published in the journal PLOS One.

Have another ancient animal or scientific revelation you want us to cover? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we might talk about it on a future episode!

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This episode was produced by Kat Lonsdorf and Berly McCoy. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez, Viet Le and Christopher Intagliata. Rebecca checked the facts. The audio engineers were Patrick Murray and Stu Rushfield.