[HN Gopher] Britain's largest 'Sea Dragon' discovered in UK's sm...
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Britain's largest 'Sea Dragon' discovered in UK's smallest county
Author : OJFord
Score : 155 points
Date : 2022-01-10 10:44 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lrwt.org.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lrwt.org.uk)
| abledon wrote:
| With bones like that I'm imaging a peasant digging up some
| skulls/bones like this in the medieval ages, and then later on,
| getting drunk and popping off as a farfetched story teller in the
| tavern... not surprised at how tales of "Dragons" would pop up.
| adolph wrote:
| The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in
| Greek and Roman Times Paperback - March 27, 2011
|
| _Griffins, Cyclopes, Monsters, and Giants--these fabulous
| creatures of classical mythology continue to live in the modern
| imagination through the vivid accounts that have come down to
| us from the ancient Greeks and Romans. But what if these beings
| were more than merely fictions? What if monstrous creatures
| once roamed the earth in the very places where their legends
| first arose? This is the arresting and original thesis that
| Adrienne Mayor explores in The First Fossil Hunters. Through
| careful research and meticulous documentation, she convincingly
| shows that many of the giants and monsters of myth did have a
| basis in fact--in the enormous bones of long-extinct species
| that were once abundant in the lands of the Greeks and Romans._
|
| https://www.amazon.com/First-Fossil-Hunters-Dinosaurs-Mammot...
| enchiridion wrote:
| I'm mostly just surprised that these types of fossils did not
| end up as heirlooms covered in gold and jewels.
|
| Does anything like that exist?
| ckarmann wrote:
| I don't know but these fossils are often very fragile and can
| even collapse under their own weight when unearthed. There is
| little chance something like this would have survived
| centuries.
| aphrax wrote:
| This is just down the road from me - the reservoir is quite
| interesting in that they submerged two villages to make it - back
| in the 1970's from what I can recall...
| cmpxchg8b wrote:
| They also had to move the graveyard of a church that was to be
| submerged.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Half-submerged! Normanton Church genuinely looks beautiful in
| its peninsula state:
|
| https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&as_q=normanton+church
| csense wrote:
| It only wanted tree fiddy.
| onychomys wrote:
| For anybody who doesn't want to click through, it's an
| Ichthyosaur.
| iso1210 wrote:
| I've got an anti-histamine for that
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| Holy shit! Such a huge yet complete fossil! Is it one of the best
| preserved fossil of an ichthyosaurus?
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Title is so confusing. Is the discovered sea dragon largest in
| the UK, or is it just the great Britain's largest?(I know article
| answers it)
| _joel wrote:
| For one moment I thought we'd had a covert super heavy lift
| program that had just come to light. Ah well :)
| samwillis wrote:
| This is so cool, its only about 10 miles down the road from us!
|
| My daughters school is great at jumping on these things when they
| happen, I bet the Sea Dragon will be the talk of the playground
| today.
|
| I'm amazed that these things are kept to quiet until they make a
| big public splash, absolutely no chat/rumours about this locally
| despite it being found 11 months ago.
|
| Rutland (the UKs smallest county) is doing quite well for
| discoveries right now, last year a massive Roman mosaic floor was
| uncovered in a field [0] and a shackled Human Roman skeleton was
| also found[1].
|
| 0:
| https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/nov/25/archaeologis...
|
| 1: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/07/shackled-
| ske...
| Accacin wrote:
| I'm going to sound pretty dumb right now, but I'm from
| Leicestershire and have been to Rutland water many times when I
| was younger, but I never knew that Rutland was a county.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| It wasn't. Rutland was a county up until the 70s. It was then
| absorbed into Leicestershire because Rutland is, by rights,
| too small to be at all economic to be run as a county.
|
| Despite this, in 1994, it became a county once again (as a
| "unitary authority") because local identification with
| Rutland is so strong. By and large Rutlanders - of whom I was
| once one! - are happy to pay an extra PS10 or PS20 on their
| council tax just to have their own council.
| iso1210 wrote:
| North West Leicstershire council tax for band D is
| PS1,886.88 including police, fire, and the two-layer system
| (plus parish/town precept)
|
| Rutland is PS2,143.75 (plus parish/town)
|
| That's PS20 _a month_ extra.
| samwillis wrote:
| Getting slightly off topic, but one of my pet peeves about
| Stamford (where I live) is that we are not part of Rutland.
| Stamford is part of Lincolnshire but stuck way down the
| bottom on its own, surrounded on three sides by other
| counties, one being Rutland. We are really neglected by the
| county and district councils. Take a look at a map[0] (if
| you haven't seen before) of the county boundary around our
| little town, it is so stupid. It would make so much more
| sense for us and a few of the surrounding villages to be
| annexed too Rutland, it would increase the GDP of the
| county helping it to become more sustainable.
|
| During the Covid lockdowns there was only one road out of
| town you could legally drive down.
|
| Fortunately it looks like the beginning of this may be
| happing, the proposed parliamentary boundary redrawing
| moves us to share an MP with Oakham. First of many steps.
|
| [0]:
| https://wikishire.co.uk/map/#/centre=52.642,-0.454/zoom=11
| Bayart wrote:
| >I'm amazed that these things are kept to quiet until they make
| a big public splash, absolutely no chat/rumours about this
| locally despite it being found 11 months ago.
|
| Sadly theft is a big problem everywhere, be it antiquities or
| fossils. Far less so in countries like Britain because it's
| wealthy and dense enough that it's not rampant like in some
| other countries (Mongolia comes to mind for fossils), but I'm
| certain the researchers would still rather take precautions, if
| only to keep away reckless tourists.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Is it theft? Who owns such a fossil can be complicated.
| Sometimes it might belong to whoever pulls it out of the
| ground first, depending on where it is. In somewhere as
| ancient as Britain, you will need legal advice before
| deciding who if anyone owns such an object.
| Bayart wrote:
| Britain happens to be quite special on that subject and has
| a positive approach to things like detectorism. But I doubt
| it has anything to do with how << ancient >> it is (it's
| not anymore ancient than anywhere in Eurasia), rather it's
| a property of a quirky legal system. Try to pull anything
| like that out of the ground in my country (France), and
| you're both unequivocally a thief _and_ a vandal.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Ancient as in thousands of years of laws, layers that you
| have to wade through to figure out who owns what
| underground.
| pmyteh wrote:
| It's not that complicated in the UK. In the vast majority
| of cases it's either Treasure[0] (which has a special
| procedure: report it to the local coroner to deal with)
| or it belongs to the landowner (unless you have an
| agreement with them otherwise).
|
| There are some corner cases, but you're not going to
| accidentally find an oil deposit so most of them just
| won't apply. Detectorists will normally arrange a 50/50
| split with the landowner, I understand.
|
| [0]: https://finds.org.uk/treasure/advice/summary
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Fossils are not artifacts, they weren't dropped or cached
| by anyone. They have never been anyone's property. They
| are "natural". The rules are therefore different, more
| akin to someone picking mushrooms than someone finding a
| lost gold ring. When something has never had a human
| owner, gaining first possession can really matter.
| pmyteh wrote:
| Fungi, flowers, fruit, and foliage (growing wild, not
| cultivated) are one of the corner cases - they're
| specifically carved out by s.4(3) of the Theft Act 1968.
| There are a few others, as I said: mineral rights, wild
| and semi-wild animals, etc. But otherwise it's not
| generally complicated (at least in England and Wales).
|
| Now, you have a good case that the natural things
| _shouldn 't_ belong to the landowner. But English law has
| chosen not to agree with you (unsurprisingly given the
| strength of the landed interest over British history).
| First possession is not the rule here, it's the ownership
| of the land it's found on that matters.
| arethuza wrote:
| I don't think that applies in Scotland:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Act_1996
|
| https://treasuretrovescotland.co.uk/
|
| The Treasure Trove Unit at NMS have delegated authority
| from the _Queen's and Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer_
| (QLTR) which is the Scots legal institution with, I
| think, the coolest name.
| pmyteh wrote:
| Huh. TIL! I knew Scotland doesn't have a coronial system,
| but I assumed given the relatively recent reforms to
| treasure in E&W similar rules would have been brought in
| UK-wide and cases would just go to the local Sheriff.
|
| Looking at the Scottish Treasure Trove website Scots law
| does look more sensible than the old English position, so
| I suppose they just decided not to interfere.
| arethuza wrote:
| One of my hobbies is scanning comments on HN and when
| someone mentions something about a "UK" legal or
| education matter jumping in and adding a "Not in
| Scotland" comment - I really should automate the process
| ;-)
| pmyteh wrote:
| I'm normally quite good at claiming England & Wales only,
| but you definitely get a point for this one :-)
| sandworm101 wrote:
| The last line of the bbc article talks of a tv show. I would
| hate to think that this article was held until that show was
| ready to air. The BBC is meant to be above such commercial
| shenanigans.
| samwillis wrote:
| I suspect some of it is about security, keeping it secret
| until they have it securely out the ground. Although that
| must have been completed months ago.
| Someone wrote:
| "Late summer 2021" according to
| https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59915689, so
| months ago, but not much more.
|
| They might not have known whether it was complete at the
| time they lifted it out, either.
| robga wrote:
| A Guardian article says the dig was in August and September.
| The first 3 episodes in the BBC's brilliant Digging for
| Britain that aired last week look like they were shot in a
| similar timeframe. This fossil will covered in tomorrow's
| show. I think what we'd find is that those associated with
| the discovery timed their announement with the show airing
| rather than the BBC dictating it.
| gnufx wrote:
| I wasn't sure
| https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/jurassic-giant--
| t... was interesting enough to post, but it mentions "an
| exclusive" for _Digging for Britain_.
| mellosouls wrote:
| From the Beeb's report [1]
|
| _" I rang up the county council and I said I think I've found a
| dinosaur," explained Joe Davis, who works at Rutland Water Nature
| Reserve._
|
| :
|
| _The council said to Mr Davis: "We don't have a dinosaur
| department at Rutland County Council so we're going to have to
| get someone to call you back."_
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59915689
| hutzlibu wrote:
| I like that dry and sometimes dark humor part of the british
| culture very much.
| NotVerstappen wrote:
| These austerity measures have just gone too far!
| tomalpha wrote:
| I love this quote, but to be fair it's immediately followed by:
| A team of palaeontologists were brought in for a closer look.
|
| Which, assuming it was done by Rutland County Council, is
| actually pretty cool.
|
| (Edit: where "it" is the act of bringing the team in from
| Manchester Uni)
| reaperducer wrote:
| Sometimes small towns get excited about things like this and
| do a much better job than you might think for a municipality
| of their size.
|
| If you're ever tragically lost and end up in Shoshone,
| California (population 31), the tiny one-room town museum is
| an absolute treasure if you're into dinosaurs. It's been a
| few years since I was last there, but IIRC, the tiny town
| museum had to go to court to get its largest dinosaur find
| back from some big California university that tried to keep
| it.
|
| See also: The Franklin Mineral Museum in Franklin, New
| Jersey. An amazing place for rockhounds. Especially if you're
| into ones that glow.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Yes, Rutland is the smallest county, I expect they'd have to
| ask for help from the Leicestershire or Cambridgeshire dinosaur
| departments
| gnufx wrote:
| It's so small that they haven't even been able to afford
| their own TV channel for many years, let alone a paleontology
| department, so can be excused for not knowing that
| ichthyosaurs weren't dinosaurs.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutland_Weekend_Television
| JetSetWilly wrote:
| Extremely boring fact check: Rutland is not "the UK's
| smallest county" - it is England's smallest county, once
| again English organisations find it hard to tell the
| difference between England and the UK.
|
| Clackmannanshire (159 km2) is significantly smaller than
| Rutland (382 km2).
| iso1210 wrote:
| > Rutland is not "the UK's smallest county"
|
| Who are you quoting?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The headline, both on HN and the source article.
| OJFord wrote:
| I did pause, tempted to change the headline, but decided
| to leave it for mods if desired. Not because I was fact-
| checking though - I just think it's irrelevant and
| uninteresting!
| 6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote:
| Rutland is not even England's smallest county [1], it's the
| fourth according to definitions laid out in the
| Lieutenancies Act of 1997 [2]. I guess the copy editor
| kiboshed "Britain's largest 'Sea Dragon' discovered in
| England's fourth smallest county".
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_counties_of_Eng
| land...
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieutenancies_Act_1997
| JetSetWilly wrote:
| Hmn that is an interesting point, maybe then the "City of
| London" is the UK's smallest county?
| OJFord wrote:
| It's the smallest 'historic county' (i.e. per Domesday
| book, I believe), that's probably where they got it from.
|
| It's also not the smallest unitary authority (which I'd
| argue is a more usual layman's meaning of 'county' than
| 'ceremonial county for the purposes of the lieutenancies
| act' - who on the street means to include the City of
| London when they say 'county' for example?) - beaten by
| Bristol and the IoW.
| stakkur wrote:
| This is the most English thread I've read all year.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| It is, however, the least populous.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > once again English organisations find it hard to tell the
| difference between England and the UK.
|
| If you think that's difficult for English organisations,
| you should see what the rest of the world thinks. I'm proud
| to treat "England" and "the United Kingdom" as synonyms.
| It's like referring to the Soviet Union as "Russia".
|
| _Only_ English (Welsh / Scottish / Irish) organisations
| would have any interest in distinguishing between England
| and "the United Kingdom". Who's more likely to distinguish
| between New York and Texas: the Guardian or the New York
| Times?
| [deleted]
| djrogers wrote:
| > The ichthyosaur is approximately 180 million years old and,
| with a skeleton measuring around 10 metres in length and a skull
| weighing approximately one tonne
|
| For the who didn't want to wade down to the 8th paragraph to find
| out
| zackkatz wrote:
| There's a great short video on the Anglican Water website:
|
| https://www.anglianwater.co.uk/community/rutland-sea-dragon
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(page generated 2022-01-10 23:01 UTC)