Seven Foot Long Fossil Fish Found In Clay Pits At Peterborough

Fossil is being examined by the Natural History Museum.

Views of the clay pits being excavated at Peterborough with the ground ridged and waterlogged. Close up of two fossils. At the Natural History Museum in London, Anglia TV reporter Greg Barnes stands in front of the fossil skeleton of a Diplodocus dinosaur and talks about the period when Britain resembled the hot and steamy jungles of Africa. More scenes of the excavations at the clay pits including a large digger crane moving soil. David Martill is seen working in the excavation. He strikes a rock with a hammer to reveal the fossils inside the layers. He says he initially found small pieces of bone in the clay which led him to discover the skull of a fish. Working back to discover more of the fish it was a surprise when it was revealed to be more than two metres in length. At the Natural History Museum, Greg Barnes stands by a table where the fossil is laid out in 15 sections. It will take a year to stabilise and reveal the fossil but the head, a fin and the tail are already visible. Dr Colin Patterson, senior palaeontologist at the Museum, shows photos in a book of a similar fish fossil. It had a large head with long jaws without teeth, and 150 million years ago it would have fed by swimming with its mouth open to filter micro-organisms in the manner of whale sharks and whales today. Another large fossil skeleton displayed at the Museum shows a swimming creature with long jaws. More scenes at the Peterborough clay pit. Asked whether there might be more fossils in the pit, David Martill says they have already found parts of a giant fish which grew to between 50 and 100 feet long. This short video was made to be shown in a news story on Anglia Television early evening news / magazine programme About Anglia.

Keywords

Fossils; Fish; Museums; Brickworks; Skeletons; Archaeology; Palaeontology

Additional Description

Professor David Martill, palaeontologist, is Emeritus Professor at the University of Portsmouth.