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Plumbing The Depths

This is the remarkable story of how Dorset plumber Steve Etches (above) became a world-renowned palaeontologist and his

discovery and bringing to life of a lost world. An underwater world that lay beneath the tropical Jurassic seas over 150 million

years ago. A time when some of the most fearsome sea creatures that have ever lived were at their apex of evolution.

More surprising still is the fact Steve has achieved all this with no formal academic qualifications and worked as a professional

plumber for 43 years. What started as a childhood hobby grew into a lifelong obsession and a lifetime of fossil hunting and

collecting. Following in the footsteps of other great 19th

century fossil hunter pioneers such as Mary Anning, Steve has

discovered over thirty new species and a whole Jurassic marine ecosystem. From fossilised plankton to giant marine reptiles

such as the awesome Pliosaur or the Loch Ness Monster like Pleisiosaur. Remarkable still is that these discoveries were made

along the Jurassic coast line in Southern Britain that was thought to be barren of fossils. Steve s collection is a revelation and

tells the story not only about the history of our planet but provides a tantalising glimpse into the future.

Today, Steve has become one of the world s most respected and honoured palaeontologists showered with awards and

accolades including the Mary Anning Prize, the Halstead Medal and in June 2014 he received an MBE and an honorary Doctorate

from Southampton University. Not bad for a boy who left school having only passed metal work!

With exclusive access, we follow Steve as he makes new discoveries, many totally new to science, and captured live on camera.

He realises a life-long dream to find a permanent home for his collection with the building of a multi-million-pound state of the

art museum, a few doors down from his home in Kimmeridge.

The museum does not just house the collection but also Steve himself behind glass! If he is not fossil hunting on Kimmeridge Bay

after a full moon or heavy storm, he can often be seen on display in the public gallery through a glazed screen preparing the

next specimen for display or analysis. Where can you meet the collector and their collection in the same place? Who needs

multimedia interactive when you can talk to a live fossil hunter!

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Curating Space-Collection relocated from Steve’s sitting room and garage to a state of the art museum.

The Original JAWS – five years in the making Steve Etches first major and significant find was back in 1982 when he spotted chunks of bone strewn over the beach and

immediately identified them as part of a Pliosaur jaw belonging to one of the most ferocious reptiles of the Jurassic deep. When

he went back to explore the area for the tooth-bearing part of the jaw, missing from his haul, he spotted a bone sticking out of

the cliff high above him.

Hundreds of times he returned to the same spot, waiting for the cliff to crumble and surrender its treasure. Each time, he was

disappointed. Finally, a full four years later he found a gap in the cliff above and a massive pile as big as a room, of limestone,

grass, rubble and shale on the beach.

"I was shaking like a leaf, I was so excited. I just pulled off the top of the shale and there was this great jaw stuck up. I tried to

carry as much as I could back in my rucksack. Damaged my back for about five years, but I hardly noticed at the time. I had to get

help from the blokes who worked with me in the end. All plumbers. Useless as cows with muskets they were at finding what

we were looking for, but in the end, we found everything, all bar 5 or 6 teeth and one bone. I kept looking but the next week we

had a huge storm and the sea washed the whole lot away".

Sometimes collecting is a desperate race for time. Bringing home, a Pterosaur wing (flying reptile) was one of them, with

darkness falling, the tide roaring in and the bones incarcerated in such huge, heavy slabs of shale that one man was incapable of

carrying them.

"As I stumbled along, hardly able to move for the weight in my old rucksack, I actually thought: If I have a heart attack and die, I

hope they realise there s something bloody good in the rucksack that I d died for" Steve Etches remembers.

"Panic was setting in. The sea getting closer, the light was going, I was losing control of the situation". Steve was rescued in the

nick of time by his two sons and wife before the headland was totally cut off by the tide. When asked was it worth going out

literally on a limb? For Steve, it was well worth it as it turned out to be a completely new species of Pterosaur.

While hauling lumps of rock from a threatening sea might appear to be the most gruelling part of retrieving fossils, that s just

the beginning.

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Steve with his latest catch- a 150 million-year-old Plesiosaur

According to Steve: The preparation of the fossil is the most critical process of the whole enterprise. If one single feature is

obliterated by bad preparation, half the scientific information is lost. The key to that preparation is having the right tools. The

tools range from air pens to heavy diamond grinders depending on the hardness of the rock. The work is both an art and

science, intuitive, exact and labour intensive. The preparation of a 10-foot Ichthyosaurus will typically take Steve, with

painstaking work, 6-9 months.

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Making Waves

This programme/series goes behind the scenes and reveals for the first time on television several major new discoveries to

science. Through time lapse footage we reveal Steve s latest sea monster, a giant Plesiosaur to emerge from a slab of rock. We

follow the whole procedure like a forensic autopsy. Will it be a new species and how did it die? In the process Steve discovers

evidence of predation and what and who might have been the cause of death.

We take a ride in Steve s pick-up truck with some unusual passengers. Apart from Steve s gun dog in the back there are two

unassuming boxes with specimens that have an appointment at Southampton University. It is here where Europe s highest

resolution X-Ray topographic imaging unit can be found offering advanced 3D results. One of the boxes contains a skull from a

possible new Crocodile species and the other an egg sac from an Ammonite. Despite their abundance in the fossil record nothing

is known about how they reproduced. This might be the first evidence of embryonic marine life yet discovered from the Jurassic

sea. A world first! This will be revealed for the first time on television along with the discovery of one of Darwin s missing links!

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Scanning the skull of a new species of crocodile Possible Embryonic Ammonite eggs- a world first!

Each fossil specimen is presented and interpreted to bring to life their individual stories. Together they build a picture of how

these creatures lived, bred and died. How they adapted to their surroundings and evolved over time.

Rock Stars and special guest appearances

During filming Steve has some surprising visitors to the museum including another Rock legend, Ian Gillan, lead singer for the

rock band Deep Purple. Ian takes a break from recording his latest album in Hamburg and flies in specially to meet Steve. Ian is a

local and draws inspiration for his music from the area. We capture the moment when both Rock stars meet for the first time

and Ian is given the opportunity to work on the Plesiosaur with Steve supervising.

Comedy icon and wildlife presenter Bill Oddie drops by to look at Steve s flying reptile collection of Pterosaurs. Again, Steve

reveals some new Pterosaur remains that are new to science and they discuss parallels with modern birds. Other local celeb

museum supporters include Emilia and Edward Fox along with Sir Michael Hobbs, museum trustee and the Director of the

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British Museum, who is another trustee and local resident. Visiting academics and TV Presenter include Professor Ian Stewart

from Portsmouth University, Professor Andrew Gale and Dr Neil Gosling (Senior Teaching Fellow at Southampton University to

name just a few.)

This remarkable story is the result of one man s passion or rather life-long obsession. Over thirty years of discovery and diligent

research, dogged determination not just to find and collect, but also to bring to life the amazing stories of the creatures that

existed in the Jurassic age.