by It’s not every day that Dorset farmer Rob Vearncombe has to find a way to get a huge fossilized creature off a cliff face. But this is what he did earlier this year when he designed a crate in which the skull of a giant prehistoric reptile was lowered off England’s Jurassic coast – a huge engineering challenge.
“He deserves a lot of credit,” said fossil expert Steve Etches.
Vearncombe’s efforts were part of a long, complex and dangerous operation to move the skull of this T rex of the seas, which will be shown in David Attenborough’s BBC documentary on New Year’s Day. The marine reptile has been discovered in Dorset and identified as an entirely new species of reptile that lived 150m years ago.
Attenborough will tell the story of the dangerous mission to remove a giant fossilized skull of “one of the greatest predators the world has ever seen” from a cliff face in treacherous conditions.
The skull alone is almost 2 meters long, and the huge creature was embedded at a dizzying height, about 15 meters down the cliff and 11 meters from the ground – making it “very difficult to reach and even more difficult work on it”, says Attenborough. .
Attenborough and the giant sea monster the team will show abseiling down on ropes, hanging from them while drilling and hammering into the rock, working at speed before fossil remains tumbled into the sea, lost forever. When it rained, liquefied mudstone turned into potentially deadly slippery clay, increasing the danger.
This creature was one of the most ferocious Jurassic predators that hunted in the Kimmeridgean sea in the age of the dinosaurs. Attenborough notes that the rocks were once mud on the sea floor in which the remains of prehistoric sea creatures were buried: “Over millions of years, the continents have shifted, the seas have receded, and today, as erosion these cliffs, fossilized skeletons are exposed. “
The pliosaur’s skull has survived with many razor-sharp teeth with which it once tore the flesh of its victims, including ichthyosaurs.
The discovery was made by textile designer Philip Jacobs, who had been hunting for marine reptile fossils on the Jurassic coast for many years. He saw it among the shells of the beach and understood its importance immediately. He contacted Etches, telling him: “I have discovered something unusual.”
He had fallen off the cliff. It was too heavy to lift, so Jacobs buried it before returning to Etches. Using a drone, they mapped the site on the cliff face from where it fell and quickly assembled a team, including palaeontologists, professional climbers and BBC cameramen.
Etches said: “It was very exciting but, logistically speaking, it’s not a good place to collect a fossil from. The sheer cliffs are crumbling and unsafe, eroding rapidly. It is a very dangerous area – with large rock walls and slippery ledges – so safety was paramount.”
The team believes the entire pliosaur may still be inside the cliff, but they focused on the skull, which could reveal more about an animal than any other part of its skeleton.
It has survived in extraordinary condition, and is perhaps the best preserved and most complete specimen found.
Through cutting-edge science and cutting-edge visual effects, the documentary brings to life a creature with flapping wings, a short strong neck and a huge head with huge jaws. It was “about the size of a double-decker bus”, says Attenborough.
The universities of Southampton and Bristol and Imperial College London were among those involved in studying the skull. The latest technology, including the most powerful CT scanners, could reveal the reptile’s blood vessels and sensory pits.
Attenborough says: “The sensory pits found on the snouts of our pliosaurs may have acted like miniature pressure pads depending on the turbulence produced by ichthyosaurs when swimming through deep water. In fact, our pliiosaur was able to chase its prey even in the darkest depths using its skin.”
Each of its four flippers would have been 2 meters long, propelling it through the water at great speed and enabling it to accelerate up to 30mph, making it one of the fastest animals in the Jurassic seas.
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The analysis even showed that it could often replace its teeth – teeth that were long and sharp towards the front of its jaw and more like hooks at the back, a “lethal combination” for catching large sharks and stinging slippery fish.
Etches, 74, a former plumber, started collecting fossils more than 40 years ago, finding around 2,800 fossils from the Kimmeridge Bay area housed in the local Etches Collection museum. The skull will then be shown after the information climates.
He took on the tough task of removing mudstone from about six: “What you can see is a huge amount of work to bring it to life, with the help of a huge team of people.” Judyth Sassoon, paleontologist and honorary researcher at the University of Bristol, is leading the scientific description, working closely with Etches. She said: “It took a lot of cleaning and preparation to reveal all the scientifically important features. When this fossil came out of the cliff it was rather gray and nondescript, more like a normal piece of rock. But Steve, with his eagle eye, recognized it for the important specimen it was, and now we can see it in all its glory.”
On the achievement of reaching this rock, Etches said: “It’s a dream come true. I don’t think anyone in their right mind would ever believe we could do it.”
