If you haven’t heard the legend of the Rutland Sea Dragon, pull up a chair. We’re celebrating the half-decade anniversary of the day Joe Davis went out to drain a lagoon and came back with a Jurassic titan that’s literally the size of a London double-decker bus.
The Discovery of a Lifetime
Back in February 2021, Joe Davis of the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust was just doing his job at the Rutland Water Nature Reserve. He spotted something “organic” poking out of the mud. Most of us would have assumed it was a weird pipe or an old log, but Joe realized he was looking at vertebrae.
Fast forward through a massive, secret excavation, and the truth came out: Joe had found a 10-metre-long Temnodontosaurus trigonodon. This isn’t just a few bones, it’s the most complete skeleton of a large prehistoric reptile ever found in the UK.
“It’s a blink of an eye in the 180 million years since the ichthyosaurs’ demise, but it only feels like yesterday that our team was unearthing this spectacular fossil,” the team shared, reflecting on the five-year milestone.
The “Double-Decker” Scale
- To put this 180-million-year-old predator in perspective:
- Length: 10 metres (33 feet). That is a double-decker bus swimming through the Jurassic seas.
- Weight: The skull alone weighs one tonne.
The Vibe: Imagine a dolphin-shaped apex predator with eyes the size of dinner plates and a mouth full of teeth designed to crush anything in its path.
The Secrets Are Coming Out
For the last five years, scientists led by the “Indiana Jones of Paleontology,” Dr. Dean Lomax, have been painstakingly cleaning and researching the bones. Now, they’re finally ready to spill the tea on what this Sea Dragon’s life was actually like.
What did it eat? How did it die? And why was it hanging out in what is now a quiet nature reserve in the UK’s smallest county?
Want to see the Dragon?
If you’re a fossil fanatic (or just love a good “bus-sized monster” story), you’re in luck. To mark the 5th anniversary, Dr. Dean Lomax is heading to the Rutland County Museum on February 7, 2026.
He’ll be giving a talk titled “The Secret Lives of Dinosaurs and The Remarkable Rutland Sea Dragon,” where attendees get a sneak peek at the bones and the cutting-edge research that’s been happening behind the scenes.
It’s not every day you get to stand next to a creature that ruled the ocean before the first bird ever flew. Don’t miss out on seeing Britain’s greatest fossil find in the flesh… or, well, the stone.