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A Kansas boy searching for fossils during a geology club field trip stumbled onto something far bigger than expected: the remains of a 15-foot-long marine reptile that swam an ancient sea 85 million years ago.
Corbin Bullard was just 11 years old when he spotted several large vertebrae protruding from rock at a quarry near his hometown of Clearwater, Kansas, during a September 2025 outing with the Sedgwick County 4-H Geology Club.
“I didn’t know what it was, but I knew that it was something big,” Bullard told FOX Local.
Over the course of three additional excavation trips, Bullard and fellow club members carefully uncovered nearly an entire tylosaurus, a massive marine reptile that ruled the seas during the Cretaceous Period.
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The fossil measured more than 15 feet long and included everything from the animal’s enormous skull to most of its skeleton.
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The ancient predator lived roughly 82 million to 87 million years ago, according to researchers who dated the specimen to the Smoky Hill Chalk formation, a fossil-rich layer of rock that stretches across parts of Kansas.
The discovery emerged from a quarry where commercial crews routinely shave away layers of rock, exposing relics hidden for millions of years. Before Bullard’s find, club members had mostly uncovered shark teeth and fish fossils.
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Now 12 and preparing to enter seventh grade, Bullard plans to display the fossil’s skull at the Sedgwick County Fair in July.
“I hope [the judges] say that it looks really nice and that we put a lot of effort into it,” he said.
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