Attenborough and the Sea Dragon Page #6

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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.

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