Attenborough and the Giant Sea Monster is a programme about happiness. I mean, ostensibly it’s a programme about the discovery, extraction and examination of the intact (in 150m year old fossil terms) skull of a pliosaur from a cliff face along the Jurassic coast. But really, it’s a study in joy.
Joy is everywhere. “Is there anything more beautiful than that?” says Attenborough in his introduction, while he cleaves a rock in two like he used to as a schoolboy fossil hunter (“You’re supposed to wear glasses these days”) to reveal an ammonite.
Joy and disbelief mingle in the phone footage of the original discovery on the beach at Kimmeridge Bay of the snout of the pliosaur skull, and in every lineament of fossil expert Steve Etches as the realisation dawns of the likelihood that the rest of the skull is above them, embedded somewhere in the towering cliff.
So it proves. All he and his team have to do now is get it out. How do you do that? Well, quickly, before the seasonal storms come and the treasure is lost for ever. And by rappelling down the cliff face and chipping your way round the huge specimen, protecting the exposed bits as you go with tinfoil and superglue. “I thought stupidly it wouldn’t be as hard as it is,” says Etches as they work their way with a combination of brute force and incredible dexterity round their half-tonne jewel. But he is only talking of a deeper joy.
Meanwhile, Attenborough talks joyfully to experts about information already gleaned from the snout: the sensory pits that could detect changes in water pressure brought about by oncoming prey, the variety of tooth shapes that maximised grip and the signs that new ones came in when the old ones broke, giving the beast longevity as well as extraordinary hunting prowess.
After more than three weeks of vertical digging, the skull is free from its surrounding stone. All they have to do now is get it up to terra firma. Fortunately, farmer and self-taught engineer Rob has spent the time (possibly even more happily than either Attenborough or Etches has) inventing a device that will allow them to do just that. It is a wooden crate on metal skis which pivots to enable it to stay horizontal no matter what angle it has to be brought up or down the cliff. If you can’t envision that – well, that is why people like Rob exist, and should be revered as gods. And if you are not filled with joy as the whole thing works like a dream and the skull comes safely to rest in Etches’ restoration workshop, then who hurt you? Two of Etches’ team go so far as to hug him. “Now, now,” he says. “None of that.”
Then Etches embarks on a year of cleaning the millions of years off the fossilised bone, the delicacy increasing the closer he gets to the beast. Paleontologist Dr Judyth Sassoon comes to visit and determines that it is likely to be a new species of pliosaur to add to the eight already known. Attenborough’s face lights up. “This is truly exciting.” The years fall away and you can still see the schoolboy beneath. Not fossilised. Still there.
The schoolboy and the 97-year-old naturalist visit paleobiologist Dr Andre Rowe to discuss convergent evolution, the likely strength, size and habits of the new pliosaur, Professor Emily Rayfield, a paleontologist specialising in skeletal mechanics to talk about – well, its skeletal mechanics and Dr Luke Muscutt in his hydrodynamic lab to see how the marine reptile with its rare four flippers instead of two used them and how fast it could go.
It is all bad news for ichthyosaurs, basically, but all very good for us, the viewers. There is nothing like watching passionate, informed people share their knowledge, and their enthusiasm – their joy – to chip away the accrued layers of protective cynicism and excavate the tender soul once more. Look at what we can do, look at what we can come to know. Look at what we can feel, appreciate, bring back to life with the power of imagination (and a little well-placed CGI). An hour is nowhere near long enough. I could watch an entire hour, an entire series, on every aspect mentioned.
In the closing moments, Attenborough urges us to keep on. “There is still so much to learn about these extraordinary animals,” he says. “And I for one will never tire of discovering more.”
Attenborough and the Giant Sea Monster is on BBC One and iPlayer in the UK. An Australian air date has yet to be announced.
