Colossal pliosaur fossil emerges from rock

The innermost secrets of a colossal "sea monster" skull are being revealed by one of the UK's most powerful CT scanner.

The x-rays are helping to build up a 3D picture of this ferocious predator, called a pliosaur, which terrorised the oceans 150 million years ago.

The 2.4m-long fossil skull was recently unearthed along the UK's Jurassic coast, and is thought to belong to one of the biggest pliosaurs ever found.

The scans could establish if the giant is a species that is new to science.

But before the fossil is scanned, it has to be removed from its rocky casing. Here fossil preparator Scott Moore-Fay explains how this work is carried out.