Scientists Recover 150 Million-Year-Old Sea Monster Skull from Rocks in England [PHOTO]

In the English county of Dorset, a giant pliosaur skull, which is approximately 150 million years old, has been recovered from the rocks of the so-called Jurassic Coast, the BBC and The Guardian report.

According to scientists, pliosaurs inhabited the ocean about 150 million years ago.

The 2-metre-long fossil is the skull of "one of the largest predators the world has ever seen".

The remains of this pliosaur were first seen by fossil enthusiast Phil Jacobs. The tip of the predator's snout was lying in the pebbles on the coast. Together with palaeontologist Steve Etches, they made a makeshift stretcher to carry the fossil to safety.

A drone survey of the high cliff helped to identify the likely location of the other remains, but to get them down from a height of 15 metres, the team had to organise a complex mission. To retrieve the skull, the team of scientists excavated while hanging from ropes.

Photo: Palaeontologist Steve Etches and the 150 Million-Year-Old Sea Monster Skull. Source: BBC / Tony Jolliffe

Earlier this year, the researchers constructed a box on which the remains of the prehistoric reptile were lowered to the ground. It was a "huge engineering challenge".

Paleobiologist Emily Rayfield has already examined the large round holes in the back of the pliosaur's head. It turned out that its mouth crushed prey with a force of 33 thousand newtons.

The pliosaur skull will be shown in a special programme by naturalist David Attenborough on BBC One on New Year's Eve. David will tell all the details of the complex operation to move the find from the rock.

Attenborough notes that the rock was once silt on the seabed, in which the remains of prehistoric sea creatures were buried.

"Over millions of years, continents have shifted, seas have receded, and today, as these rocks erode, fossilised skeletons are coming to the surface," the researcher and broadcaster says.

And next year, paleontologist Steve Etches will put the skull on display at his museum in Kimmeridge, called the Etches Collection.

As The Gaze previously reported, in September, well-preserved fossils of a carnivore over 265 million years old were found in Brazil. This remarkable find consisted of a skull, ribs and forelimb bones belonging to Pampaphoneus, one of the largest carnivores that existed more than 40 million years before the dinosaurs.