New chance to meet dinos of the deep...

Prehistoric creatures star in the new Jurassic Seas experience, which opens to the public in full today.

Mysterious mudskippers and horror-movie extra horseshoe crabs are among the creatures to be seen in the exhibition, as it takes visitors on a walk through the skeletal remains of the great beasts of the sea.

The underwater world also features the giant prawn-like nautilus - on the planet for more than 400,000,000 years, and the hornshark.

Sea Life general manager Rachel Sipes said: “These creatures are all fascinating.

“As the timeline in Jurassic Seas shows, the time between humans and dinosaurs - which we think of as being enormous - in the bigger scheme of things is not, when we look back to when things like nautilus and crabs date back to.

“Nautilus are essentially unchanged, and although they look like large prawns, they 
are related to octopus and 
squid.

“We’ve been able to breed them too and the eggs will be going into the exhibit, hopefully to have nautilus young this year.

“We all grew up learning about dinosaurs and forget that there are so many creatures from that time which are alive still now. This exhibition is a way for us to see what the world was like such a long time ago.”

There’s also a computer game, putting sea creatures from the period against each other to show their might, and setting the scene of how brutal Jurassic seas once were.

The game introduces the mighty Plesiosaurus, one of the deadliest creatures to swim the pre-historic seas, as well as the Megalodon and the Liopleurodon.

And sea turtles pit their biting power against that of the great white shark and the Megalodon.

“It puts things into context,” Rachel added. “When you see the great white shark has a bite of 1.8tonnes, and the Megalodon had a bite of 18.2tonnes.”

Jurassic Seas has been specially created for Sea Life Blackpool and replaces the former Octopus Hideout feature.

It will be in place throughout this year.