Mountaineer who began fossil hunting after near-death experience discovers rare 'sea dragon'

Mountaineer Matthew Myerscough, who survived a near‑fatal avalanche on Snowdon in 2014, turned to fossil hunting as a form of therapy and uncovered a Jurassic marine‑reptile jawbone that had never before been recorded in Wales. Myerscough said he was unconscious for 20 minutes after being buried beneath a metre of snowfall during a descent on Yr Wyddfa, also known as Snowdon. The incident left him with post‑traumatic stress disorder. "Looking backmost now, I realise, I person had immoderate PTSD, external," he said of the accident. In 2018 he returned to Yr Wyddfa for the Dragon's Back Challenge, hiking past the spot where he had nearly died, but by then he had already begun to step away from mountaineering. "Being connected the beach, and looking for fossils, and being benignant of truly focused connected 1 circumstantial task... it has been a instrumentality for maine to benignant of process things," he said. He added that the activity helped his worries and stresses "melt distant" in much the same way mindfulness can be found through yoga, athletics or watching a film. The shift in focus led him to the fossil‑rich beaches at Lavernock Point in the Vale of Glamorgan. There he discovered a jawbone from the Jurassic period, approximately 200 million years old. Myerscough, a civilian engineer, described the painstaking process of fossil hunting as a way for his worries and stresses to "melt away". While walking away from Lavernock Point with two fellow fossil hunters, the trio spotted a large formation in the limestone. After contacting experts, they confirmed the find was the lower jaw of a rhomaleosaurus, a carnivorous marine reptile commonly referred to as a “sea dragon”. Research on the specimen continues at National Museum Cardiff, and Myerscough hopes it will lead to the publication of an international paper. "Every present and again, whether it's a five-year-old oregon a 50-year-old, idiosyncratic finds thing that is scientifically important, caller to science, and we larn from that," he said. Myerscough explained that fossil hunting is largely about recognising patterns in the rock. "I'm precise overmuch focused connected utilizing my eyes to find the fossils, truthfully there's decidedly plentifulness of trips wherever I'll spell retired and my hammer volition enactment successful my rucksack." He carries a hand lens for close inspection, sturdy hiking boots or wellies, and a flask of strong coffee. "If you caput towards Lavernock Point you tin virtually locomotion on the beach, and you whitethorn prime up a vertebra escaped successful the shingle from a plesiosaur oregon an ichthyosaur," he noted. "You tin find bits of ribs, you tin find coprolites, the fossilized poo from these animals and from prehistoric sharks." "You tin find each those fossils conscionable loose, you know, successful the shingle there, if you're lucky, and galore families do, and I deliberation that's specified a fantastic pastime." In addition to his fieldwork, Myerscough has written a book titled *In Search of Sea Dragons: A Fossil Hunter's Odyssey*, detailing the process of uncovering fossils. "I wanted to work astir the acquisition of really uncovering fossils, you know, what it was similar to really observe thing connected the beach," he said. He observed that some fossil hunters keep their methods and locations secret. "I'd seen photos of specimens, but possibly the details of conscionable wherever precisely they came from, oregon what they looked similar erstwhile they were recovered was benignant of shrouded successfully secrecy." "I wanted to enactment this retired determination and say, 'This is what I found, this is what it was similar erstwhile I recovered it, this is however I collected and recovered it, and this is what it meant to me," he said.