Paleontology. I know what you're all thinking. "Jurassic Park." Maybe Ross from "Friends."
(Laughter)
Perhaps even Indiana Jones? But that's archaeology. Let me show you some real paleontology.
Now, first of all, let's take a step back in time. Not quite to the Jurassic, at least not yet, but to January 21, 2021, when I received an email about a curious discovery made in Rutland in the Midlands. As a paleontologist, you can probably imagine, I get countless messages and emails from people saying, "Oh, we've made a cool fossil discovery." Being completely honest, most of the time, it turns out to be, well, a weird shaped rock,
(Laughter)
But, little did I know this email would change my life. The find had been made Rutland Water Nature Reserve by Joe Davis, who works for the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust who run the reserve in partnership with Anglian Water, who own the land. Whilst doing some routine maintenance in one of the Reserve's lagoons, he'd lowered the water levels and Joe had spotted by chance this structure. Unsure of what to make of it, he thought, "Could this be a bit of old pipe, maybe? Or perhaps, is this a dinosaur skeleton?” he joked. Luckily, Joe thought to himself, "Well, could it be an important discovery?" So crucially, he sought expert advice.
When these photos pinged into my inbox, I immediately recognized them as large vertebrae from the spine of an ichthyosaur, or as it’s colloquially known as a sea dragon. Now, I do need to clear that name up just a little bit, because, I'm sorry to say, they're not dragons. Sorry. They're also not swimming dinosaurs. They’re not the Loch Ness Monster on tour either. And they're most definitely not, as the BBC dubbed them "Sea dragon dinosaur dolphin fossils."
(Laughter)
Terrible.
Ichthyosaurs are in fact an awesome group of ancient marine reptiles that lived in the prehistoric seas as dinosaurs reigned supreme on the land. Like modern-day whales and dolphins, they gave birth to live young, and they breathed air. Unfortunately, ichthyosaurs went extinct around 90 million years ago. Our Rutland ichthyosaur lived during the early Jurassic, around about 180 million years ago. This is a time when Rutland was deep underwater, covered by an ancient tropical sea.
Now I spent most of my professional career of around 14 years studying thousands of ichthyosaurs. And this has been a great pleasure to travel around the world, study lots and lots of ichthyosaurs. And so when I received these photos, I immediately knew that this could be something very special indeed. But of course, just looking at photos, it's hard to know exactly whether this is going to be something unique or is it just a few vertebrae? After speaking to fellow marine reptile expert Dr. Mark Evans, who was also sent details of the find, we decided to visit the site in February. And I led a mini excavation, a bit of an exploratory dig to see what we could uncover. On a cold day in February, where the ground was literally frozen right beneath our feet, after spending so much time meticulously removing the Jurassic clay from around the skeleton, we were blown away because we revealed what appeared to be a gigantic skeleton unlike anything ever found in Britain before. Clearly, this was a big deal.
But we had to be very quick to contain our excitement. Because due to the damp wintery conditions and the fact that this was a super fragile skeleton, it meant it wasn't the right time to collect this ichthyosaur. So unfortunately, might seem a little bit counterintuitive, but we had to rebury the ichthyosaur. And we had to cover it with plastic sheets and then Jurassic clay. Because you have to remember, this, of course, is an active nature reserve. And so the nature reserve, they had to raise the water levels. Then the ichthyosaur went back under the water, but it was actually protected. And then waiting for what felt like millions of years.
(Laughter)
In six months we were back on site, but this time with a superb team of paleontologists. When we arrived on site, we had to pick up where we left off. And so we removed those plastic sheets, remove the Jurassic clay, and start to expose some more of the skeleton. We were overly ambitious in February. We thought, based on that little dig that we did, the one-day excavation, we thought, OK, we could probably get the entire skeleton out of the ground in just one week. Yeah, we were wrong. The skeleton was much larger, more important and more complete than any of us would have imagined. And it doubled our time on site. We spent 14 and a half days altogether, spread over three weeks, and this was also working very long hours, from sunrise to sunset.
Whilst the team was excavating the ichthyosaur, we also had to look out for all sorts of other pieces in the surrounding matrix of the ichthyosaur. So in my hand here, I'm actually holding one of the isolated teeth from this ichthyosaur. We also found hundreds of these squid-like ammonites, we found lots of fossil shells, and these are all really important because they help to build up this bigger picture of the ancient Jurassic ecosystem in which this ichthyosaur lived. The team also had to move fast as well. This really was quite a race against time, because once we exposed the skeleton, there was more chance that it could end up degrading further. So team members like Dr. Emma Nicholls here, had to apply a consolidant, a thin glue that seeps into the bones and helps them to become more robust to remove the skeleton out of the ground.
Once we fully exposed the skeleton, we then could eventually record all of our measurements and get a full data set. For example, like for the skull. Nigel here, who I co-led the excavation with, so Nigel focused on the conservation side of things, ensuring that the ichthyosaur remains safe and secure throughout the entire excavation, Nigel is holding an ichthyosaur, a regular-size ichthyosaur skull. Look at the size comparison to this Jurassic giant that we're excavating. Pretty phenomenal. And this ichthyosaur, I should say, that Nigel's holding, this is actually of a species I named after him a few years ago, called Ichthyosaurs larkini.
Whilst on site, one of the team members, Steve Dey, created a wonderful photogrammetry model, which, photogrammetry is an interesting technique where you take thousands of photos and put them together and build a three-dimensional model. Now what you're looking at first of all here, is a base model that we made back in February. But watch this little video. As we begin to zoom in, you can see some of the spine that we exposed in February. It's pretty cool, it's three-dimensional. But now watch, you can superimpose the entire skeleton that we'd revealed in the summer. Here's the main excavation. Now we can zoom in and you can look at all of the finer details of the bones and the three-dimensionality of them. And like magic, now we remove the Jurassic clay. Now we zoom out and are able to see just how complete this ichthyosaur is. So you start from the very tip of the snout all the way down to the penny-sized vertebrae. Pretty cool. And we're even able to pick out individual bones and look at them in three dimensions like this. This is the sort of techniques that are sort of revolutionizing paleontology. We're able to capture all of this data whilst the ichthyosaur sat in the ground. So before we've even removed anything. Now we've taken that out of the ground, we still have this data, and we can send that to our colleagues all around the world.
Of course, now fully uncovered -- it’s me taking a nap -- It's time to literally get this Jurassic giant out of the ground. Much easier said than done when you're dealing with such a complete and very heavy fossil weighing several tons.
The first port of call was to create a trench all the way around the skeleton. And the reason for that is that we needed to get right on underneath the skeleton so that we could begin the process of plaster jacketing. So those white bits you can see in the image, that's not snow, although it was very cold a few days on site, that's actually plaster. Plaster jacketing is an important process in the field of paleontology. We use these protective plaster jackets that essentially care for and secure the bones and the surrounding matrix so that we can take them out of the field and into the lab so that we can analyze the fossil and the matrix and work out what's going on. We also had to, for the bigger skull block and the body block, we also had to create a wooden frame to help support the immense weight.
After various challenges on site, we finally managed to remove the entire skeleton after dissecting it into several more manageable blocks. But this one block here, which is the main body block, this weighed one and a half tons. It's actually being removed, which is quite nice, it's actually being removed by Joe Davis, who found the ichthyosaur. And this was an interesting moment for the team because it's quite an emotional moment, because we'd spent and invested so much time and energy into this ichthyosaur excavation that this moment captured that final piece where we're removing this from its final resting place, 180 million years ago.
On January 10, 2022, this is almost one year after Joe had made that incredible discovery, Angling Water and the University of Manchester issued a joint press release announcing the find. Here’s Joe and I on the BBC Breakfast Studio chatting about this discovery and revealing it to the world. Amazingly, this story went viral. We were picked up on a multitude of different platforms, TV, radio, newspaper, it went viral all across social media. We were thrilled to bits with this, it was amazing, amazing response about our beautiful ichthyosaur.
But one of the things is, is why do you think exactly did this ichthyosaur get so much interest? First of all, everybody loves a cool fossil, especially when it's big and it's complete. So you've got a massive tick there. But genuinely, this ichthyosaur was an apex predator at the very top of its food chain in the Jurassic sea. So again, another big tick. And admittedly the photograph is very cool, although it is me again laying down.
(Laughter)
But on top of that, one thing it's important to highlight is the very fact that Britain is the birthplace of ichthyosaurs. This ichthyosaur specimen in the photo, this was the first ichthyosaur specimen brought to the attention of science, found by Mary and Joseph Anning more than 200 years ago in the Lyme Regis on the Dorset coast. Nowadays, finding ichthyosaur fossils in the UK, generally they're found on the Somerset, the Dorset and the Yorkshire coastlines. And that's because you have the constant erosion of the foreshore and the cliffs. You might be lucky to find, say, the isolated one or two vertebrae on the beach if you go looking. But still finding a complete skeleton, and especially anything large on the coastline is incredibly rare. This is why finding the Rutland ichthyosaur in the center of the UK in an unusual exposure is so extraordinarily rare.
So what next for this significant specimen? Well, despite ongoing plans to try to replace the Rutland Water Nature Reserve with “Joerassic Park” --
(Laughter)
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I apologize. Compose myself. No, the next major step is for Nigel to clean and conserve the entire skeleton. And this is going to take at least two years to get to that point. At that stage, then, me and the rest of the team are able to study the ichthyosaur in as much detail as possible and then prepare it for its eventual display at Rutland, where it will then attract, hopefully millions of people will travel around the world to come and see this specimen, marvel at this Jurassic giant, and understand the hidden history right beneath their feet.
What an incredible journey. With most fossil finds, there's always an element of luck involved. You know, being in the right place at the right time. People search their entire lives for something like this and never even come close. The funny thing is, Joe wasn't even looking for this. He genuinely stumbled upon this exceptional discovery. At ten meters long, the Rutland ichthyosaur is the most complete skeleton of a large prehistoric reptile ever found in the UK. This once-in-a-lifetime discovery represents one of the greatest finds in British paleontological history. On a personal level, leading this excavation and revealing this Jurassic giant has been one of the highlights of my career.
Thank you all very much for letting me share this journey with you.
(Applause)
