Britain's largest 'Sea Dragon' discovered in UK's smallest county | Hacker News Reader

Britain's largest 'Sea Dragon' discovered in UK's smallest county

lrwt.org.uk

161 pointsOJFord56 comments

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

These austerity measures have just gone too far!

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)

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.

I like that dry and sometimes dark humor part of the british culture very much.

Because, despite the long discussion thread here, the relative size ranking of Rutland County Council doesn't matter here. The wry observation would have happened in other counties too. Pretty much no English county council has a dinosaur department, or a palaeontology department come to that. Calling in the boffins from a university/museum, that does, would be the response pretty much everywhere.

Yes, Rutland is the smallest county, I expect they'd have to ask for help from the Leicestershire or Cambridgeshire dinosaur departments

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).

> Rutland is not "the UK's smallest county"

Who are you quoting?

The headline, both on HN and the source article.

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!

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_England...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieutenancies_Act_1997

Hmn that is an interesting point, maybe then the "City of London" is the UK's smallest county?

It is, however, the least populous.

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.

This is the most English thread I’ve read all year.

> 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?

New York is not a subset of Texas. Distinguishing between the two of like distinguishing between Wales and Scotland, something I think most people can do. Distinguishing between New York City and New York state on the other hand is much closer to distinguishing between Britain, UK, England

Possibly The Guardian given the View from 9th Avenue's implications for New York geographers. (-:

* https://saulsteinbergfoundation.org/essay/view-of-the-world-...

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

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...

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

>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.

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.

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.

Ancient as in thousands of years of laws, layers that you have to wade through to figure out who owns what underground.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 ;-)

I'm normally quite good at claiming England & Wales only, but you definitely get a point for this one :-)

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.

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 £10 or £20 on their council tax just to have their own council.

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

North West Leicstershire council tax for band D is £1,886.88 including police, fire, and the two-layer system (plus parish/town precept)

Rutland is £2,143.75 (plus parish/town)

That's £20 a month extra.

For anybody who doesn't want to click through, it's an Ichthyosaur.

I've got an anti-histamine for that

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.

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?

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.

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...

For one moment I thought we'd had a covert super heavy lift program that had just come to light. Ah well :)

There’s a great short video on the Anglican Water website:

https://www.anglianwater.co.uk/community/rutland-sea-dragon

> 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

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...

They also had to move the graveyard of a church that was to be submerged.

Half-submerged! Normanton Church genuinely looks beautiful in its peninsula state:

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&as_q=normanton+church

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)

Holy shit! Such a huge yet complete fossil! Is it one of the best preserved fossil of an ichthyosaurus?

It only wanted tree fiddy.

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