[ad_1]
TRANSCRIPT
Thought to have been over 30 toes in size, just like a doubledecker bus.
Within the late Jurassic, Europe was an archipelago of islands, a lot nearer to the equator than it’s at present.
It seas had been heat, shallow, and teeming with life.
And in these waters beneath my toes lurked the final word marine predator, the pliosaur.
Not like dinosaurs that lived on land, these colossal marine reptiles spent their entire lives within the ocean.
Thought to have been over 30 toes in size, just like a doubledecker bus.
That they had lengthy, broad flippers; quick, sturdy necks; large heads, and large jaws.
However there’s nonetheless loads we do not learn about these nice sea monsters, which is why this new discovery is so vital.
Steve believes that your complete pliosaur should still be contained in the cliff, however it’s the cranium on which he is concentrating.
A cranium can reveal extra about an animal than every other a part of its skeleton.
Discovering a whole specimen is uncommon, however it could possibly inform us a terrific deal about how the animal lived.
– It is fairly scorching and soiled work.
– [Host] Steve and Chris suppose they are going to have about three weeks to dig the fossil out earlier than the storms of late summer season come.
– It is a studying curve.
I assumed, stupidly, that it would not be fairly as exhausting as this.
We’re most likely over a meter in.
There’s the cranium there, simply behind me.
It is as much as us now to get it out with none harm.
– [Host] If the cranium is efficiently extracted, it’s going to be taken to the Etches Assortment Museum in Cambridge, which was based by Steve in 2016 and now incorporates almost 3000 fossils from the Jurassic interval.
[ad_2]