The Mystery of Sea Creatures (2/5): A giant Jurassic sea dragon, unearthed | Dean R. Lomax

**Elise Hu** (0:00)
It is summer where I live, and luckily, I live near the Pacific Ocean. As the weather continues to heat up, I'm spending more time at the beach. It always makes me wonder, what's going on under the water? From the deep sea to the shoreline, the ocean is teeming with creatures that are stranger, smarter and more surprising than most of us could ever dream up. For July's TED Talks Daily playlist, we have gathered five of our favorite talks that dive into the awe-inspiring and occasionally mind-bending creatures from orcas to kinky fish that live beneath the waves. Happy listening.
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Dinosaurs. You're about to hear the exciting story of the excavation of a Jurassic giant, led by the excavation leader, Dean Lomax. In his 2022 talk from TEDx Manchester, he describes the work it took to uncover the Ichthyosaur fossil. And in doing so, he sheds light on the ways modern technology has revolutionized paleontology. That's coming up right after a short break.
And now, our TED Talk of the day.

**Dean R. Lomax** (1:25)
Pelleontology. I know what you're all thinking. Jurassic Park? Maybe Ross from Friends?
Perhaps even Indiana Jones? But that's archaeology. Let me show you some real pelleontology. Now, first of all, let's take a step back in time. Not quite to the Jurassic, at least not yet, but I first bought to January 21st, 2021, when I received an email about a curious discovery made in Rutland, in the Midlands. As a pelleontologist, 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.
But little did I know this email would change my life. The find had been made at Rutland Water Nature Reserve by Joe Davis, who works for the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust to run the reserve in partnership with Anglin 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, hmm, could this be a bit of old pipe, maybe? Or perhaps, is this a dinosaur skeleton? He joked. Luckily, Joe thought to himself, well, is this, 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 what is 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's of them, Sea Dragon Dinosaur Dolphin Fossils.
Terrible.
Ichthyosaurs are in fact an awesome group of ancient marine reptiles that lived in the prehistoric seas as dinosaurs reigned supreme on land. Like modern day whales and dolphins, they gave birth to live young and they breathe there. 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've 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 has also sent details of the find, we decided to visit the site in February and lead and highlight the 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, it might seem a little bit counterintuitive, but we had to re-bury 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 they had to also, the nature reserve, they had to raise the water levels to, then the Ichthyosaur went back under the water, but it was actually protected. And then waiting for what felt like millions of years, in six months, we were back on site, but this time with a superb team of paleontologists.