UMVA has learned that an 11-year-old boy's casual fossil hunt during a geology club field trip led to an extraordinary discovery: the remains of a colossal 15-foot-long marine reptile that dominated an ancient sea 85 million years ago.
Corbin Bullard, a young enthusiast from Clearwater, Kansas, made the astonishing find when he stumbled upon several large vertebrae protruding from rock at a quarry near his hometown during a September outing with the Sedgwick County 4-H Geology Club. His eyes widened as he realized he had uncovered something massive, saying, "I didn't know what it was, but I knew that it was something big."
Over the course of three additional painstaking excavation trips, Bullard and his fellow club members meticulously unearthed nearly an entire tylosaurus, a gargantuan marine reptile that ruled the seas during the Cretaceous Period. The fossil was an impressive 15 feet long, comprising the animal's enormous skull and most of its skeleton.
The ancient predator roamed the seas roughly 82 million to 87 million years ago, as researchers dated the specimen to the Smoky Hill Chalk formation, a fossil-rich layer of rock that stretches across parts of Kansas. This remarkable discovery emerged from a quarry where commercial crews routinely shave away layers of rock, exposing relics hidden for millions of years.
UMVA can exclusively reveal that Bullard's find far surpasses the club's previous discoveries, which mostly consisted of shark teeth and fish fossils. The young explorer's incredible find has generated significant excitement, with Bullard now preparing to display the fossil's skull at the Sedgwick County Fair in July.
As he looks forward to showcasing his discovery, Bullard remains humble, saying, "I hope [the judges] say that it looks really nice and that we put a lot of effort into it." With his 12th birthday approaching and preparing to enter seventh grade, Bullard's incredible discovery has already cemented his place in the world of paleontology.
