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In May 2020, 11-year-old Ruby Reynolds and her father, Justin, stumbled upon a remarkable discovery while fossil-hunting on Blue Anchor Beach in Somerset, England.

Through a bit of sleuthing, the family confirmed that the four-inch-long, oval-shaped fossil they had found belonged to an extinct marine reptile known as an ichthyosaur.

But after cooperating with a team of paleontologists, they discovered more pieces of the creature’s jawbone in what they have described as possibly the largest marine reptile ever found, the Washington Post reported.

In their study, the Reynoldses and researchers explained that the remains belonged to a new species of ichthyosaur, named Ichthyotitan severnensis. Piecing together other parts, they suggested that the extinct animal’s jawbone could have been more than six feet long.

This would mean that the I. severnensis could have been around 80 feet in length, but the team can’t fully confirm this without a full skeleton.

Still, the remains were found not far from the nearby beach of Lilstock, where co-author Dean Lomax and his colleagues uncovered the jawbone of another species of ichthyosaur.

They explained that both marine reptiles were from a period called the Rhaetian, which was around the end of the Triassic period some 202 million years ago.

Ichthyosaurs occupied Earth’s seas during the age of the dinosaurs: They emerged around 250 million years ago and their diet probably consisted of squid and fish.

Although they evolved into at least 150 species, their evolution remains a topic of mystery among paleontologists.

The recent find could shed more light on their evolution and how they were able to grow their large bodies before the mass extinction event at the end of the Triassic.