Overview
- Heather Salt spotted an upper jaw fragment during a guided walk on the Jurassic Coast at Lyme Regis.
- The walk leader shared a photo with museum staff, and curator Paul Davis identified it as an early Jurassic marine crocodylomorph.
- The bone matches the type known as Turnersuchus hingleyae, a slender, fish-eating reptile that lived about 200 million years ago.
- Salt donated the fossil to Lyme Regis Museum, which placed it on public view in its Charmouth Crocodile exhibit.
- Only about 11 specimens of this kind are known, so the piece could help researchers study jaw function and early shifts to life at sea.