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A huge bone from a jurassic sea monster has been found in the garden of a retired banker.

John Lambert found the bone in the back yard of his home in Tuddenham St Martin, near Ipswich.

Ipswich museum identified the bone as belonging to a giant underwater lizard branded "the most fearsome predator that ever lived".

Lambert dug up the bone more than a decade ago, when he was digging a trench to build a boundary wall, and only recently took it to the museum to be examined.

Experts confirmed the bone as belonging to a pliosaur, a huge, terrifying reptile which prowled the oceans between 250 and 65 million years ago.

The upper limb bone weighs 15lbs and is 16ins long.

John, 68, said it was "pure chance" he found the bone but he knew immediately that he should not throw it away.

(Image: Archant)

Mr Lambert said: "It looked far too special for that.

"It did look like a really big bone that was tremendously heavy and I had earmarked that I would take it for identification, but then life gets on top of you doesn't it?

"Then one day I thought, what happened to that bone and I found it in the workshop.

"I phoned the museum and they said 'bring it in, we'd love to have a look at it'."

He added: "It's rather fun.

"I've been here 29 years and we've got eight acres of ground.

"We're keen on the gardening side and I can honestly say we've found nothing whatsoever of any kind of value apart from rubbish, so it's really fun to have found this.

"It will probably go to the museum here.

"Although it's not from Suffolk, in that it wasn't swimming around here, it is part of Suffolk's heritage."

Pliosaurs hunted the seas at the same time as the dinosaurs.

The fearsome, speedy predators boasted razor-sharp teeth for killing prey and measured up to 65ft long.

They had a long streamlined body with a short, tapering tail, relatively long neck and four paddle-like limbs.