The largest and most complete fossil of its kind ever found in Britain has been hailed as an amazing find by a wetlands environmentalist.
Scientists say the ancient specimen of an ancient marine reptile that swam in the ocean when dinosaurs were still a thing is almost complete from tip to tail.
The largest complete Ichthyosaur ever found in Britain is the one found in the Rutland Sea Dragon.
The dinosaur is old. Anglian water.
The fossil was first spied by Joe Davis in February of 2021.
The enormous specimen was removed from its muddy tomb after being excavated over three weeks in a delicate operation that involved plaster and wooden splints.
Faced with mounting bird poop and bad weather, the team of paleontologists, volunteers and conservers persevered, safely uncovering and removing the 10-meter-long fossil and its entire backbone.
"I know a lot of people have spent their lives looking for something like this and I've been very lucky to come across it," Davis told New Scientist about the find, which was initially dismissed by his colleague as "just a pipe".
The Ichthyosaurs, which can be found in sizes from 1 meter to more than 25 meters and resemble modern-day dolphins, first appeared 250 million years ago and died out about 160 million years later.
The researchers say the sea dragon was covered in clay-rich rocks around 180 million years ago. The preliminary findings have not yet been peer-reviewed, but it is most likely a species called Temnodontosaurus trigonodon.
"It is one of the greatest finds in British paleontological history and one of the most amazing discoveries in the world," says the visiting scientist.
The size of the new fossil, which dwarfs its discoverers, was still a "total surprise" to local scientists, who had found two smaller, partial icthyosaur skeletons decades ago.
"We thought that the specimen might have had its tail destroyed or scattered by bulldozers when the lagoon had been dug out some 10 years previously," writes paleontologists in a post about the find.
"We found ribs, a portion of the skull, and an entire vertebral column down to the very tip of the tail, which is the size of a penny."
The giant fossil was encased in plaster and weighed more than one ton, so the first step was to uncover the skeleton.
It's not often that you are responsible for lifting a very important but fragile fossil.
The entireskeleton was excavated and lifted as a series of strong plaster and hessian field jackets reinforced with wooden frames. The total weight is about 3 tonnes.
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January 10, 2022, is when Mr. Ichthyosaurus will be born.
The specimen is wrapped in a plaster cast and has not yet been studied in detail. Once the discovery has been cleaned up, the researchers will prepare academic papers about it.
"Despite the thousands of ichthyosaurs discovered in Britain, none of them are quite as large as this specimen, and few examples of this genus have been found in the UK that are this complete," said Larkin in a post.
The team took a 3D Scan of the specimen before removing the bones.
The fossils surrounding the main specimen, including squid-like ammonites and belemnites, were taken by the researchers to better understand the environment where the animal lived and died.
Mark Evans of the University of Leicester says that if the identification of the ichthyosaur is correct, it will provide new details on the geographic range of the species.
There are other fossils of the large-eyed Temnodontosaurus found in Germany and North America.
The team plans to apply for funding to clean and prepare the fossil, which they hope will be placed on display close to where it was found.
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