Attenborough and the Sea Dragon Page #3

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to the Lyme Regis seas,

which could be why no-one has ever

found one of these here before.

Back at the dig site, the

rain has stopped at last.

But the storm is a reminder

that winter is on its way.

The team must try to extract

the rest of the dragon's body

before worse weather arrives.

That's how hard the rock is.

It's actually smashed

the end off the chisel.

So, you can see what we're dealing with.

At last, they find signs of

the rest of the skeleton.

- Lots and lots of bone in there.

- Yeah.

Ribs and all sorts of stuff.

And there's another particularly

exciting discovery.

- Is there skin?

- Yeah, look.

- Oh, really?

They've found signs of fossilized skin.

Rare, isn't it?

Yeah, very rare.

The blocks that contain bones and skin

can't be thrown down like the other rocks.

They must be carefully strapped

up and gently lowered.

That's the first block down.

A few more to go, but if they go

like that, I'll be very pleased.

Two weeks after they started work, I

go down again to check on progress.

- How's it going?

- Well, quite well so far.

- A lot shifted.

- Yeah, about 20 tonnes of it, I think.

- Really?

- Yes.

How's it doing? Is it caught?

- No, it's OK.

- It's OK? Yeah.

What do you reckon's in it?

This block's got vertebrae,

the other part of the ribcage

and it's definitely got the

back paddles in there.

You can see a cross section through them.

VOICEOVER:
While the team continue

lowering the huge blocks,

VOICEOVER:
Chris shows me what

they've already collected.

So, lots over here.

- Ah, well, I can see something there.

- Ah!

- That's more obvious, yeah.

- Yeah.

Here, you can see,

glinting in the sunlight,

sections through the backbone,

the vertebral column.

Wow!

And these are the ribs that are

still attached to the vertebrae

and these are the neurals

that come off the backbone.

The spines off the top of the back.

- Yeah, but they've actually got skin preserved on them.

- No, really? - Yeah.

- Can you see that here?

- Well, that's the very black.

You can see it on the impression as well.

VOICEOVER:
This is great news,

but something puzzles me.

Would the head have been

on this side or that side?

Most likely here in this next slab.

- And it's not there?

- Not so far.

Oh, boy!

How many more tonnes to go?

HE SIGHS, THEY LAUGH

- Only a few!

- THEY LAUGH

OK.

Once the blocks are down on the beach,

the team remove as much

excess limestone as possible

to make them lighter.

Even then, they're extremely heavy

so to get them back to Lyme Regis,

they're loaded onto a pontoon

and towed back by boat.

So, for the first time

in 200 million years,

our strange ichthyosaur once

again takes to the water.

The dig may be over,

but the investigation

is only just beginning.

WHIRRING:

Now, the work becomes more delicate,

involving not sledgehammers,

but small vibrating chisels

that chip off the limestone in tiny flakes.

It's detailed work that will

take months to complete.

It's like a jigsaw puzzle

of things you can't see.

It's almost forensic.

You don't know the story, you don't

know what's inside the block

until you reveal it.

I've never seen in all my years an

ichthyosaur that looked like this

so every other part of the

skeleton that we reveal

is very exciting cos you're never

quite sure what's going on,

what it's going to look like and

it is, it's very different.

Day after day and week after week,

Chris and his team work patiently

to expose more of the skeleton.

And as they do so, the bones

reveal something very intriguing.

I've come down to Chris'

workshop to take a look.

It's a bit of squeeze past the plesiosaur.

VOICEOVER:
It really is an Aladdin's cave.

VOICEOVER; After weeks of work,

VOICEOVER:
Chris has exposed

the backbones and ribs.

So, this is it so far.

VOICEOVER:
And in doing so, he's

made a startling discovery.

It looks like it's been attacked.

- Gosh!

- There's breakages all through the ribcage.

If you follow one rib, you

go along here, down to here,

then this piece corresponds to

this, which then goes over to here

so one rib is now broken into three pieces.

How extraordinary! But

what's happened here?

Here, the vertebral column's

been actually pulled away.

I'm fairly positive it was

done in life and the paddles,

the flippers have been ripped off.

Where would they go?

But they're in a very odd

position, aren't they?

I mean, they're pointing

in the wrong direction.

They should be basically in this position

and facing the other way up

and they've been ripped

off and turned over.

Gosh!

Well, where was the head?

The head should be here.

- That's the very last vertebrae.

- Back of the neck?

- Yeah.

So, the head's been torn off

and there's no evidence.

There's no teeth or pieces of bone.

It's completely gone.

- So, it's a murder.

- Yes!

- Really?

Yeah, I think it was killed.

- Did this predator crunch the head, do you think?

- Who knows?

It's 200 millions years ago,

so it's a bit of guesswork,

really, isn't it?

So, it's a murder story

without a complete body yet.

To find out more, we need to

reveal the rest of the skeleton.

So it's all hands on deck.

They've even roped me in.

This is more difficult than it looks.

Very good!

Could you start on three days a week?

- Is it all right?

- It's good, yeah.

- I haven't gone too close to the bone?

- No, no.

- Phew, that's a relief!

But what of the missing head?

If it was ripped off,

Chris thinks he might

still be able to find it

somewhere on the beach,

so at every opportunity,

he scours the area where

the first block was found.

The best time to look is after a storm

when a strong sea has

moved sand and shingle

and perhaps revealed the rocks beneath.

To try and deduce just how our

ichthyosaur met its fate,

we've sent images of the fossil

to someone who specialises

in investigating the cause of

death in prehistoric animals.

You sent me some photographs and I

had a look at some of these breaks.

Now, first of all, I noticed this, here.

If you look, you can just see this

bulbous piece on the rib here.

This is where the rib has

healed after a break

and the animal's gone

on to live another day.

There's a bite mark here that runs

all the way up the paddle bones.

You can see that it's healed as well.

Yeah, it's definitely an old injury.

- This animal's had a little bit of a bad start in life.

- Yeah.

But some of the other breaks

tell a different story.

If you look down here and

especially this one,

this fracture here mirrors

that fracture there

and then we can see a

whole line of fractures

where there's no new bone growth.

Something has actually

crushed this ribcage.

So look here at these neural spines.

These are absolutely perfect

and then from here, they're

broken all the way down to here.

This is the last one that's

broken and then here,

they're perfect again.

So, there to there is damaged.

On the ribs, there to there

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