Giant 'Sea Monster' Skull Found in England

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Skull of huge sea monster that could have eaten T. rex found in Dorset - Times Online

From Times Online October 27, 2009

Skull of huge sea monster that could have eaten T. rex found in DorsetJenny Booth

Dinosaur experts in Dorset are examining the fossilised skull of a sea monster so large they say it could have eaten a Tyrannosaurus rex for breakfast.

The fossil head is 2.4m (8ft) long, suggesting that the beast measured up to 16m (54ft) from the tip of its massive, crocodile-like snout to the end of its muscular tail, making it one of the largest specimens ever found.

The skull belongs to a pliosaur, one of a group of giant aquatic reptiles which roamed the warm seas over what is now southern Britain 150 million years ago.

It was spotted protruding from an unstable patch of cliff by Kevan Sheehan, a local fossil hunter, after being exposed by a rockfall. He spent four years going back day after day and painstakingly managed to uncover it.

"Pliosaur skulls are very big, but not that robust, in general, and you tend to find them crushed flat — completely pancaked," Richard Forrest, an expert on plesiosaurs told the BBC.

"What is fantastic about this new skull, not only is it absolutely enormous, but it is pretty much in 3D and not much distorted.

"You have this wonderful lower jaw — and you can just see from the depth and the thickness that this was immensely strong. It could have taken a human in one gulp. In fact, something like a T. rex would have been breakfast for a beast like this."

Mr Forrest spoke of his awe at the discovery. "I had heard rumours that something big was turning up. But seeing this thing in the flesh, so to speak, is just jaw-dropping. It is simply enormous."

The fossil has been bought for £20,000 by Dorset County Museum, and it is hoped to put it on public display there in about six months time when the rocky accretions and debris have been cleaned away.

Richard Edmonds, one of Dorset's earth science managers for the Jurassic Coast, praised the "amazing effort" of the fossil hunter to uncover the skull, but warned that it could take decades for the rest of the giant to emerge from its cliff tomb.

"The ground is dipping very steeply, and as it is such a huge specimen it will be buried beneath layer upon layer of rock, so we will have to wait patiently for the next big rockslide," he said.

David Martill, a palaeontologist from the University of Portsmouth, said that pliosaurs were monsters with massive heads filled with razor-sharp teeth, carried on short, powerful necks. They had four paddle-like limbs to propel their bulky body through the water, and preyed on the ancestors of dolphins and even on others of their own kind.

"They had massive big muscles on their necks, and you would have imagined that they would bite into the animal and get a good grip, and then with these massive neck muscles they probably would have thrashed the animals around and torn chunks off," said Mr Martill. "It would have been a bit of a blood bath."

With an estimated weight of between seven and 12 tonnes, the Dorset pliosaur could rival the largest known specimens in the world. The Monster and Predator X, which were found in Svalbard off northern Norway, and the Monster of Aramberri, found in Mexico in 2002, which are believed to have been of similar size.