Tourist finds chunk of oldest sea crocodile on Lyme Regis beach

An amateur fossil hunter who found a rare fragment from the world's oldest marine crocodile said she thought it was a piece of wood with nails driven through it. The upper jawbone fossil, found during a guided walk along the Lyme Regis shore in Dorset, is thought to be one of only 11 found from the animal. Dr Paul Davis, palaeontologist and geology curator at Lyme Regis Museum, said that it would help researchers understand how the Jurassic croc hunted in the world's early oceans. It went on display to the public last week, as part of the museum's exhibit on the "Charmouth Crocodile" - first discovered in 2017 in nearby Charmouth. Heather Salt, an amateur fossil hunter from Solihull near Birmingham, said she travelled down to Lyme Regis in the hope of finding something for her own collection. "I really just wanted to find a little ammonite," she said. "It was by where there's an old dump eroding onto the beach, and there's lots of bits of metal, so I looked down and thought it was nails stuck into something." But when she picked it up and realised it was stone, she started to become suspicious. "I went and showed it to Casey [the guide] and he got so excited and he just said - 'are

Apr 22, 2026 → Apr 22, 2026