During an evening stroll, we picked up a large round stone that proved to be the fossilised centre of the vertebra of a Plesiosaur, a normally aquatic animal of considerable size dating from the Cretaceous (100,000,000 years ago). Such a beast was well outside the remit of the Project, but Professor Churcher is also a palaeontologist and over several seasons recorded a variety of land-, estuarine, and marine species, including sharks and several lizards.
Churcher’s latest discovery (2015) has been the recognition of a leatherback turtle of Cretaceous (100,000,000 years) age. It is provisionally classed as Protosphargis and is a new species in Egypt.
