Fossil hunter discovers rare ‘sea dragon’ at Lavernock Point

A mountaineer who nearly died in an avalanche has described how his recovery led him to amateur fossil hunting and the discovery of a marine reptile or “sea dragon” not found in Wales before.

Matthew Myerscough said he was left with post-traumatic stress disorder after being unconscious for 20 minutes buried beneath a metre of snow after a slide on Yr Wyddfa, also known as Snowdon, in 2014.

It led him away from the mountains to fossil-laden beaches at Lavernock Point in the Vale of Glamorgan, where he discovered a jaw bone from the Jurassic period 200 million years ago.

Myerscough, a civil engineer, said the painstaking process of fossil hunting helped his worries and stresses to “melt away”.

“Looking back now, I realise, I have had some PTSD, external,” he said of the accident.

Myerscough returned to Yr Wyddfa in 2018 for the Dragon’s Back Challenge, hiking past the place where he had almost died, but said by then he was moving away from mountaineering.

“Being on the beach, and looking for fossils, and being kind of really focused on one specific task… it has been a tool for me to kind of process things,” he said.

“Worries or stresses kind of melt away as you’re focused,” he said, comparing it to the mindfulness people can get from yoga, sport or watching a film.