During landscaping work on the Rutland Water Nature Reserve reservoir in the UK in February 2021, Joe Davis spotted something strange coming out of the mud.
“I called the city council and said I think I found a dinosaur,” he tells BBC News.
It wasn’t a dinosaur. But it was the fossilized remains of a ten-meter-long marine predator called an ichthyosaur. And it was the largest of its kind ever discovered in the UK.
“There were bumps, like ridges, in the mud. It felt a little organic, a little different,” Davis tells BBC News. “Then we saw something that looked almost like a jaw.”
The city council replied that they didn’t have a dinosaur department, but that they would get someone to verify the find and get in touch with him.
So a team of paleontologists was brought to the site and they concluded it was an ichthyosaur — a type of warm-blooded marine predator that breathes air, not unlike dolphins. They could grow up to 25 meters long and lived between 250 million and 90 million years ago.
Paleontologist Dean Lomax of the University of Manchester was brought in to lead the excavation team. He said the find was “unprecedented” and — owing to its size and completeness — “one of the greatest discoveries in British paleontological history.”
“We usually think of ichthyosaurs and other marine reptiles being discovered along the Jurassic coast in Dorset or the Yorkshire coast, where many of them are exposed by cliff erosion. Here, in an inland location, it’s very unusual,” he says.
Rutland is more than thirty miles off the coast, but 200 million years ago higher sea levels meant the region was covered by a shallow ocean.
one ton skull
When the water level in the Rutland Reservoir dropped again in late summer 2021, a team of paleontologists came to excavate the fossil. Special attention was paid to the removal of the massive skull.
A large clay block containing the ichthyosaur’s head was carefully removed before being covered with plaster and placed on wooden supports.
The nearly one-ton block will now be scrutinized in more detail.
“It’s not often that you are responsible for safely lifting a very important but very fragile fossil that weighs so much,” said Nigel Larkin, paleontological conservator, a visiting researcher at Reading University and a member of the team. “It’s a responsibility, but I love challenges.”
Anglian Water, which manages the Rutland Reservoir, is now seeking funding to allow the ichthyosaur to remain in the area and be appreciated by the general public.
“A lot of people thought I was joking when I said I had found a large marine reptile,” Davis said. “I think a lot of people won’t believe it until it’s on TV,” he said, who will be on BBC Two’s Digging for Britain program this Tuesday (11) in the UK.
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