Attenborough and the Sea Dragon (2018)

The remains of a dragon have just been discovered

in the cliffs of Dorset on the south-east coast of England...

one that has been hidden in the rocks for 200 million years.

It was an enormous marine reptile that ruled the seas

at the same time as the dinosaurs ruled the land.

Scientifically, it's called an ichthyosaur.

Since Jurassic times,

its fossilized bones have been locked away in these cliffs.

But now we have a chance to reveal it and its story.

Lots and lots of bone in there.

The bones are so well preserved, it may be able to give us

new insights into the lives of these remarkable creatures.

Together with a team of scientists,

we will reconstruct the skeleton and compare it to animals alive today.

We'll try to understand how it looked.

We have actual preservation of the skin of our ichthyosaur.

How extraordinary!

And how it survived in the open ocean.

Could this be a completely new species of ichthyosaur?

Our search for evidence will lead us

into an intriguing forensic investigation into how it died.

I think you're looking at a 200 million year old murder mystery.

Solving that mystery will throw light on the extraordinary world

in the Jurassic seas that once existed just off our shores.

The story of this extraordinary dragon

starts here in Dorset on the south coast of England,

one of the most important geological sites in the world...

the Jurassic Coast.

It stretches for almost 100 miles from Devon to Dorset.

And it was here that the early geologists

first collected evidence that once the world was ruled

by monstrous reptiles, quite unlike anything alive on Earth today.

Evidence of creatures that existed all that time ago

can still be found on these beaches.

Fossil collectors have been coming here for literally centuries

and these rapidly eroding cliffs are providing them

with a continuous supply of exciting things to find.

I started looking for fossils when I was a boy

and I've never lost the feeling of excitement

and anticipation of what one might discover.

The commonest fossils here are coiled shells called ammonites

and you can find them all over the place.

There's one here on this boulder.

You can see the whorls there,

but it's mostly been worn away by the sea.

But sometimes if you're lucky, you can find nodules like this

and if you look at them,

you can see there's the edge there of an ammonite and if I hit it...

If I put on protective glasses and I hit it, it should...

HE LAUGHS

How about that?

Wow!

What a find!

Ammonites, in fact, are quite common on this beach,

but every now and again, something truly rare

and spectacular is found here and quite often by this man...

one of the most skilled fossil hunters I know.

Chris Moore has been collecting fossils here for more than 30 years.

Recently, he came across a boulder

which he thought might contain something unusual.

Back in his workshop,

he exposed a mosaic of small, beautifully preserved bones

which he knew straight away were the front fins,

the paddles, of an ichthyosaur.

But they were unlike any he had ever seen before.

I still collect fossils.

I even have the remains of an ichthyosaur...

a small one of a kind that's relatively common.

This was collected by Chris about ten years ago in Dorset.

I never found anything as beautiful as this.

It's got jaws and it's got teeth and it's got paddles.

And Dorset was the very first place

where they found a really complete skeleton of one of these creatures.

This is a picture of it,

published for the very first time in 1814.

People thought it was some kind of monster, but what was it?

They thought it was a kind of cross between a reptile and a fish

so they called it an ichthyosaur - A fish lizard or sea dragon.

Since that time, many fossil fragments of ichthyosaurs

have been discovered on the Jurassic Coast.

But complete skeletons are very rare.

The particular one that Chris has just found

is significantly different from any that's ever been found here before.

It's not easy to get to the beach where it was discovered.

At high tide, the only way to do so is by boat.

I asked Chris where the rest of the skeleton might still lie.

It's in the very top limestone bed

where the cliffs are at the lowest point.

It's got about two metres on top of clay

and we'll have to clear this material off

till we get to the limestone bed.

It' a lot of hard work.

It's a lot of digging, yeah, and also we have to do it, really,

before the winter turns again and the weather gets bad

because there's a chance that the next landslip

will just push it off onto the beach and destroy it.

In Jurassic times, sea covered all this area.

On its floor, sediments washed down from the land

turned into layers of shales and limestone.

The land rose, the sea retreated

and now in the rocks,

you can find the remains of the creatures

that once lived in those ancient waters.

As well as the remains of ammonites, there are the bones of fish,

such as sharks.

But the top predators at this time were reptiles - ichthyosaurs.

They dominated the seas for more than 150 million years.

After getting permission to dig,

the team clamber down the cliff to the particular layer

where the rest of our ichthyosaur skeleton should be lying.

I'm going to need at least another metre,

cos I need to drop down to the next bit.

It's dangerous work.

These cliffs occasionally collapse without warning.

To make sure that they don't damage any of the fossils,

the team do all the digging by hand.

There's just loads of roots.

Tonnes of clay have to be removed before they even reach

the layer of limestone where they hope

the rest of the bones still lie.

Wayhey!

It was on this very coast

that the first complete skeleton of an ichthyosaur was discovered.

It was found in the 19th century

by a remarkable woman called Mary Anning.

Mary lived in the little town of Lyme Regis,

the daughter of a cabinet maker who collected fossils as a hobby.

When Mary was only 11, her father died

so she and her brother started selling fossils to visitors

to support their widowed mother.

Lyme Regis Museum now devotes a whole gallery to her and her finds.

Mary had an extraordinary talent for finding fossils and in 1811,

she discovered this gigantic creature,

the like of which no-one had ever seen before.

Dinosaurs had not yet been discovered.

No-one had any idea that way back in pre-history,

there were such gigantic creatures,

so this caused a sensation.

It was then that the popular name "sea dragon"

was given to these prehistoric monsters.

Scientists speculated on how they lived

and artists tried to imagine what they must have looked like

and how they behaved.

Back at the cliff face, Chris and his team are hard at it.

But they haven't found any more bones.

This is a massive piece. Tombstone!

Right, ready?

Chris is convinced that the skeleton to which the paddles belonged

must be somewhere here and they check every rock.

Beautiful shale!

- Lovely! - Anything interesting? - Moment of truth...

Nothing.

- Just push it off. - Yeah.

Is there anything showing?

Nothing else here.

Oh, gosh, that's hard work.

I hope there's something here.

I almost don't want to look!

- Ah! - What have you found?

- There's a bone. - Loads of bone going all the way... There's bone there.

- There's something here! - HE LAUGHS

At long last, the team's efforts are rewarded.

We've got some bones here!

- There's loads of bones. - Fantastic!

Ah! What's this?

Is that a vertebrae?

But the bones are not in the position

the team had expected to find them.

Instead of lying across the face of the cliff,

the skeleton seems to be bending back into it.

We're going to have to go down through there.

It means much more work.

And to make matters worse, a storm is brewing.

The rain is just starting,

but I think we've got to make a bit of a run for it.

We won't be working any more in this for the moment. It's torrential.

Beautiful rainbow, though.

A rainbow will be little comfort if the storm persists.

Rough seas and heavy downpours can cause landslips,

which could easily destroy any chance of retrieving the bones.

It was after just such a storm that Chris found the front limbs,

the paddles of our sea dragon.

They convinced him that the fossil was something special.

You can see why when you compare them

to the paddles of the kind of ichthyosaur

that's usually found here.

This is an adult and this is the paddle of this creature

and if you compare it to this one...

- Oh, it's huge. Oh, yeah. - I've never seen anything quite like it.

There are half a dozen rows of digits there and how many there?

I think there's at least nine or ten crossways

and obviously, you know, many more in length.

It's getting on for twice the number of digits.

- And the whole shape of the fin is completely... - Quite different.

And must be new, therefore?

- I think so. I've never seen anything quite like it. - How exciting!

It's extremely rare to find

a new species of ichthyosaur these days.

Only nine have been discovered here in the last 200 years.

But can these strange paddles tell us something