Rutland sea dragon: How remarkable ichthyosaur fossil was protected

By Greig.
The news is from the BBC.

The image is fromNigel Larkin.

The image caption is.

The skeleton's permanent home would need to be big, according to the man.

Fossil thieves, crumbling bones, and large amounts of bird poo were just a few of the challenges faced by the team that uncovered a "sea dragon"

The skeleton of an ocean-going reptile from the time of the dinosaurs was revealed to the public on Monday.

The image is from Anglian Water.

The image caption is.

The Ichthyosaurs were the top of the food chain.

Preserving the 33ft (10m) remains meant overcoming a variety of obstacles, according to the conservator.

"Because the area is a bird sanctuary, we had to spend most of the first stages shovelling bird poo out of the way," he said from his base in Shropshire.

It was a hazard for the whole three weeks. We wore gloves all the time.

Natalie Turner is the image source.

The image caption is.

The first bones were found in February.

The project was kept under wraps.

The bird-watching hides were closed due to other threats.

"As soon as people heard about it, there was a chance it could be raided," Mr. Larkin said.

People who hunt and sell things online might be unscrupulous.

We couldn't afford to make this public before we had the fossil out of the ground.

The image is from Anglian Water.

The image caption is.

The surrounding clays had to be carefully removed without damaging the fossil.

Things only got more difficult once the job of clearing the fossil got under way.

The bones were the same as a biscuit. It's too fragile to be picked up and handed around, with some of the bones being so large.

It would have been more difficult to dig out the individual pieces if they had been completely fossilised and turned to stone.

The clay was wet but baked hard in the sun.

If the clay cracked, the bones might break.

Thinksee3D has an image source.

The image caption is.

3D scans were one of the ways in which the position of each bone was recorded.

The position of the bones provided crucial evidence as the skeleton was recorded in a number of ways.

The rear fin was facing the wrong way.

This, along with a hunch in the spine, gave rise to suspicions that the ichthyosaur may have been taken.

To protect the bones and the association of the whole skeleton, large sections of it were protected by layers of plaster.

Emma Nicholl has an image source.

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The plaster jackets did not set properly in the cold weather.

This was more difficult than expected.

"We were digging in August." The problems were expected to be sunburn and heatstroke.

It was cold and we were in the middle of a large body of water.

The plaster of Paris wouldn't set at first because it was so cold. The protective jackets went on despite the dry days.

The head and body weighed a ton and a half and had to be moved using machines.

The image is from Historic England.

The image caption is.

The heritage challenge has been given by the recently revealed Achilles mosaic.

They were taken to an industrial unit in the county of Shropshire where they will find more of the dinosaur's secrets.

He said that phase one was lifting the fossil. Phase two will include studying all the hundreds of other specimen we found around the site and also opening up and cleaning a few of the smaller sections of the skeleton.

This will give us a better idea of the cost of phase three.

It's 10 metres long and will be cleaned and studied under a microscope.

Funding for the first two phases came from a number of bodies.

The permanent display of the find is yet to be secured.

The future of the Roman mosaic, which was recently uncovered in Rutland, was also brought up by local MPs, and received good treatment from Prime Minister Boris Johnson.