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Tourist finds rare chunk of oldest sea crocodile

Heather Salt, an amateur fossil hunter from Solihull, found a rare upper jawbone fragment of the world's oldest known marine crocodile (a thalattosuchian) during a guided walk along Dorset's Lyme Regis shore; initially mistaking it for wood with nails, she donated the 200-million-year-old fossil to Lyme Regis Museum, where it will aid researchers in understanding the early evolution and hunting adaptations of crocodylomorphs.