A new prehistoric sea monster has been identified, after one of its fossils spent almost 150 years sitting in museum archives.
The marine predators were 10ft-long with strong jaws and serrated teeth that allowed it to feast on large prey, such as prehistoric squid.
The Ieldraan melkshamensis, named the Melksham Monster after the Wiltshire town where the fossil was found, once roamed the seas of Europe.
But the fossil was acquired by the Natural History Museum in 1875 and sat in its archives for almost 150 years before a closer look found it held information about the origins of the distant relatives of today's crocodiles.
It was thought that the sub-family of prehistoric crocodiles, including the new species, came from the Late Jurassic period, between 152 and 157 million years ago.
But palaeontologists at the University of Edinburgh investigated further and found it was actually much older: around 163 million years.=read more
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