The skull of a huge sea monster has been unearthed from the cliffs of Dorset’s Jurassic Coast.
The skull belonged to a pliosaur, a ferocious reptile that terrorized the oceans about 150 million years ago.
The skull will be displayed in a special David Attenborough display on New Year’s Day BBC One-on me.
“This is one of the best fossils I’ve ever worked with. What makes it unique is that it’s complete,” Attenborough told BBC News.
The skull is longer than most humans, indicating the size of this creature.
The pliosaur was a killing machine, with a length of 10-12 meters and four powerful flipper-like limbs that could propel itself at high speed, and was a major ocean predator.
There are small dimples on its snout that may contain glands to help sense changes in water pressure caused by potential prey. There is a hole in his head, which may have contained a parietal, meaning a third eye. Lizards, frogs, and some fish living today also have such eyes. It is sensitive to light and may have helped it locate other animals, especially when the pliosaur emerged from deep, murky waters.
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