U.K. scientists unearth 32-foot ‘sea dragon,’ with skull that weighs more than a ton

U.K. scientists person unearthed the remains of a monumental, 180-million-year-old ichthyosaur, known arsenic a “sea dragon” — a find paleontologists are calling 1 of the country’s finest fossil finds.

At astir 32 feet with a skull weighing much than 2,000 pounds, the fossilized marine reptile is the largest and astir intact prehistoric specimen ever recovered successful the United Kingdom.

“It is simply a genuinely unprecedented find and 1 of the top finds successful British paleontological history,” Nigel Larkin, a paleontological conservator who co-led the excavation, said successful a elaborate relationship of the excavation published online.

English paleontologist Mary Anning discovered ichthyosaurs successful the 19th century. They are known for their ample eyes and teeth, reminiscent of mythical oversea dragons.

But they are nary legend, arsenic Joe Davis of the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust learned for himself, erstwhile helium spotted what appeared to beryllium rows of ample vertebrae protruding from the crushed aft the regular draining of a reservoir past February. Davis covered the tract with tarp and called the section assembly to study a imaginable dinosaur sighting, helium told the BBC.

A squad of British paleontologists with a hunch that Davis had located an ichthyosaur visited the tract connected a acold time soon after. Over the adjacent fewer months, they worked retired the excavation logistics — including however to navigate covid-19 and debar disturbing the reserve’s wildlife.

The squad yet returned successful August, erstwhile they were slightest apt to disturb the reserve’s migratory birds, for a two-month excavation.

A fewer ichthyosaur fossils had antecedently been recovered successful the aforesaid reserve, Larkin said. But it soon became wide that this fossil uncovering — astir intact from caput to process — was of acold greater significance.

The squad cleaned the skeleton successful a painstaking process and took integer 3-D photos, truthful that its archetypal signifier would beryllium preserved, Larkin wrote. Next, they dug trenches and created plaster jackets with splints to safely assistance the ichthyosaur’s dense but delicate pieces retired of the ground.

Along the way, the paleontologists collected and documented different fossils to larn much astir the reptile’s surroundings. Based connected however it had decayed, the squad suspected that the specimen had been scavenged, possibly by different ichthyosaurs, Larkin wrote.

Ichthyosaurs, which person a dolphin-like assemblage shape, apt archetypal appeared astir 250 cardinal years ago, earlier disappearing astir 90 cardinal years ago.