Working with bits and pieces of incomplete skeletons, scientists have had a hard time figuring out the precise dimensions of the enormous creature. Now it seems that Leedsichthys, which swam the seas 165 million years ago, may have been smaller than previously believed-roughly half as big as earlier estimates, in fact.

Even so, it was probably a little bigger than today's plankton-feeding whale sharks, and its standing as the biggest bony fish ever is still intact.

The new evidence about the enormous fish is part of a study presented by University of Bristol paleontologist Jeff Liston this week at the 61st annual Symposium on Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Ever since Leedsichthys was first described by the British