School kid Digs Up Dinosaur-like Sea Creature

You never know what you might find in your garden! Year 10 student Raymond Hodgson and groundsman Ben Smith have unearthed a giant dinosaur-like sea creature in a school vegie garden in Australia.

The pair were digging corner posts for a vegetable garden at the Richmond State School, in western Queensland, when they made the find.

At first they thought the hard lumps in the dirt were rocks but luckily Mr Smith recognised them as bits of fossilised bone.

It turned out the men had unearthed the bones from an ichthyosaur, a marine reptile like a cross between a dolphin and a shark, that ruled the inland sea that covered Richmond 100 million years ago.

This isn’t the first fossil find in Richmond. The small town is famous as part of Australia's "dinosaur trail". Last year a tourist came across a large dinosaur fossil while having a toilet break on the side of the road outside the town.

This latest ichthyosaur find will go on display at the school and has not stopped work on the new vegie garden – they’re just digging more carefully now!