A God - fearing menage in Victorian England buried a giantIchthyosaurusfossil out of concern it could threaten their Christian belief . Now , after some 150 year and a change of heart , the family has unearth the stunning prehistoric fossil .
TheIchthyosaurusfossil was discovered in 1850 by the family of cider brandy manufacturing business Julian Temperley in Somerset , England . Local paperBurnham & Highbridge Weekly Newsreports the household were builder ' merchant at the time and unearthed the relic while moil in a quarry .
After returning the fossil to their home , the family decided to bury it as they did n’t want to feel they were “ denying God ” and the creation chronicle by display it . After all , this was several years before Charles Darwin published the Holy Scripture of evolution by rude selection , On the Origin of Species .
Temperley recalls regularly unearth the fossil as a child with his family , however , it was always reburied after they watch a in force coup d’oeil . When the Somerset Levels were hit by severe flooding in the wintertime of 2013 to 2014 , he finally decided it was time to unearth the wildcat for goodness .
" Whenever we visited Somerset as kids , we labour it up and were generally astonied , ” Temperley toldWestern Morning News .
" But after the flooding of 2013 - 14 we realized it was not a good idea to leave it buried and I guess we ought to look after it . "
He engage the help of professional dodo collector Chris Moore to hollow the dodo and net it up . By all story , it ’s a pretty telling specimen . An image of the so - called TemperleyIchthyosaurusis also set to get on the label ofTemperley’scider brandy .
Ichthyosaurus , meaning “ fish lizard ” , is a genus of ichthyosaur , a diverse group of extinct marine reptilian that resembled a dolphin - like lounge lizard . Some of the earliest fossil were discovered in the other nineteenth century by the English palaeontologist and fogey - chance maestroMary Anning . The largest name specimenof anIchthyosaurus , unearthed in the mid-1990s , quantify between 3 and 3.5 meters ( 10 and 11.5 feet ) in length , although most species were small .
The ichthyosaur were arguably one of the most successful lineages ever . They occupied a wide potpourri of niche and were very wide distributed , go forth behind fossil stay that span most of the Mesozoic Era ( 251 million to 65.5 million class ago ) .
