Dinosaur fossil found in pensioners garden rockery

Published: 7:30AM GMT twenty-seven February 2010

John Ruggles binds the paddle bone from a Plesiosaur, a sea invertebrate that lived in the Jurassic duration over 144 to 65 million years ago Photo: MASONS

John Ruggles, 75, initial found the precious Plesiosaur hoary when he distant the grassed area underline 9 years ago.

But whilst the surprising mill held his eye, he insincere it was usually an ""odd shaped"" stone and changed it around his grassed area as an ornament, in the future withdrawal it in his greenhouse.

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It was usually when oddity got the improved of John in Dec that he motionless to send the sandstone-like stone to his internal museum, who identified the extraordinary find.

Last week dumbfounded John was told the results, that showed it was piece of a Plesiosaur"s paddle bone from the Jurassic duration in ""stunning condition"".

Experts described it as ""very rare"", as it has been so well recorded that red red blood vessels are still perceivable in the twelve by 8 inches (20 by 30cm) rock.

Retired British Gas scale reader John, who lives with mother Eileen, 70, in a two-bed one-story dwelling in Downham Market, Norfolk, pronounced it was propitious he never threw it away.

He said: ""When we changed in I thought it seemed opposite to any alternative stone I had seen but I didn"t know what it was so I usually left it in the garden.

""But we were extraordinary about it for a series of years and I thought I"m going to find out about it.

""When my daughter review out the minute we usually couldn"t hold it was a bone, and the age of it as well you usually can"t think of something being that old.

""To think it was usually sitting in the grassed area for all those years!""

It was usually on Dec 4 last year that he motionless to show the stone to experts at internal Lynn Museum in King"s Lynn to see if they could strew any light on the origin.

John told them he thought it was usually a rock, but receptionists at Lynn Museum sent it to experts at the Sedgewick Museum of Earth Science in Cambridge for testing.

He returned from a legal holiday in Florida with his family to find a minute from the notable relic informing him that the stone was a 135-million-year old fossil.

The minute sensitive him that the "rock" was a paddle bone from a Plesiosaur, a sea invertebrate that lived in the Jurassic duration over 144 to 65 million years ago.

Father-of-two John told the notable relic they could have the stone if it incited out to be of seductiveness and he will be donating the stone to the museum"s permanent collection.

But prior to he donates the stone he is arranging for his granddaughter Emily Ruggles-Brown, seven, to take the stone in to propagandize for a show and tell.

John added: ""When it goes in to the notable relic people will be means to go and see the bone but not hold it.

""But it"s the beauty and fad of in contact with something so old that creates it unequivocally special.

""I have been doing it for 9 years or some-more but alternative people haven"t had the possibility but I"d never sell it. It belongs in the museum.""

Lynn Museum, that houses a pick up of 4,000 year old timbers from Norfolk"s Bronze Age joist circle, are seeking brazen to receiving receive of the new artefact.

He said: ""You can still see the red red blood vessels on the bone itself that is really rare. Usually it"s usually bone that is recorded rather than obese parts.

""It was a possibility in a million that he found it in his grassed area and it"s a really good citation in truth we will be intensely gratified to have it in the notable relic collection.""

The insatiable Plesiosaurus was a large sea invertebrate that fed on fish and small reptiles with an intensely prolonged neck and tail and 4 flippers to propel itself by the H2O with a ""flying"" motion.

The sea renter and could grow to lengths of up to 13m (40 ft) is well known to have lived from the late Triassic period, by the Jurassic duration and in to the late Cretaceous period.