Welsh fossil hunter finds Wales' first Jurassic sea dragon
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- Matthew Myerscough, a 40-year-old civil engineer, found a 201-million-year-old rhomaleosaur jaw on Lavernock beach near Penarth — the first of its kind ever found in Wales, featuring an unusual spoon-shaped end encased in hard limestone bedrock.
- Myerscough initially walked past the fossil with two fellow hunters before doubling back, calling the find "by complete chance" and noting it would not have happened "if we'd been 3ft to the left."
- The discoverer's fossil-hunting obsession began as recovery from a February 2014 avalanche on Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) that threw him off a small cliff, buried him under more than a metre of snow, and sent him tumbling 300 metres.
- Myerscough's other rare finds include a plesiosaur flipper, a huge dinosaur footprint, and an ichthyosaur forefin and skull — all catalogued in his new book "In Search of Sea Dragons: A Fossil Hunter's Odyssey."
- The fossil hunter openly publishes his find locations in the book, bucking the secretive norm among amateur collectors, and advises beginners to join guided tours and hunt on falling tides to avoid cliff-fall and tidal risks.
Why it matters: The find is the first confirmed rhomaleosaur in Wales, expanding the known range of these early Jurassic marine reptiles and giving researchers a 201-million-year-old specimen to study. Myerscough's decision to publicise his find sites in the book also breaks with the typical secrecy of amateur palaeontologists, opening the hobby wider to newcomers.
