Scientists marvel at the fossilised head of an underwater 'killing machine' from the Jurassic.

The skull of a colossal sea monster has been extracted from the cliffs of Dorset’s Jurassic Coast.

It belongs to a pliosaur, a ferocious marine reptile that terrorised the oceans about 150 million years ago.

The 2m-long fossil is one of the most complete specimens of its type ever discovered and is giving new insights into this ancient predator.

The skull will be featured in a special David Attenborough programme on BBC One on New Year’s Day.

  • rhythmisaprancer@kbin.social
    18·
    7 months ago

    I wonder how many other skulls like this protruded from the cliffs, terrorizing seafarers of days gone by? Another possible contribution to our tales of the sea perhaps?

    What an amazing find.

    • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      7 months ago

      Lewis and Clark saw some serious shit on their trip across the US and back. It would have been something to see a 70-foot-long fish fossil in the middle of what is now Kansas, while having no clue how that was even possible.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
      33·
      7 months ago

      It went extinct 150 million years ago so I don’t think it can have possibly bothered mariners of the past.

  • kellyaster@kbin.social
    11·
    7 months ago

    It’s hard to believe how well it’s preserved. They’re never this complete! It sounds like they might look for the rest of the skeleton, which will be exposed and lost to erosion anyway if it is there. If we’re lucky, we’ll also find clues about its eating habits, which isn’t out of the realm of probability considering how intact they found the skull. Truly remarkable, I really want to see that upcoming Attenborough documentary.

    • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      7 months ago

      It’s wild to think about how many incredible fossils are out there right now, buried deep and not currently in a place that is being eroded so that we happen to stumble on them during our incredibly tiny slice of geological time.

  • wolfylow@lemmy.world
    6·
    7 months ago

    Steve Etches will put the skull on display next year at his museum in Kimmeridge - the Etches Collection.

    I love that they’re going to display this in the local museum!

    • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
      12·
      7 months ago

      For a loch ness monster type creature to exist it would truly need to be supernatural.

      If there were only one it would need to be practically ageless and have survived since these creatures roamed the earth millions of years ago.

      Otherwise you’ll have to have at least two creatures in Loch Ness for the entire time to maintain a lineage throughout that time, making it twice as likely to have been discovered

      If you follow the rules of genetics the creature would likely be horribly deformed and riddled with genetic diseases if that were the case.

      To avoid that you would probably need a population of 50-100 creatures within the loch ness in order to sustain a somewhat viable population.

      It’s very unlikely that with how much attention has gone on, 50-100+ of those creatures would go undiscovered, let alone the sustenance needed to sustain that size of population.

      So no, unless it’s a single supernatural creature it’s pretty much impossible I would say.

    • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
      4·
      7 months ago

      I mean, if it’s too big to swim out of the Dochgarrot lock then it’d be easy to detect. If it isn’t then what’s keeping it in the lake instead of swimming out past Inverness and out into the Moray Firth?

      • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world
        6·
        7 months ago

        It doesn’t like Inverness it made the mistake of walking though the Ferry. After that straight back to the lock and never to the big city again. Plus it found Inverness Castle not that interesting.