Fossil hunters on the Isle of Wight have discovered the remains of the largest predatory dinosaur ever discovered in Europe.
Pieces of bone belonging to a massive spinosaurus, a two-legged beast with the face of a crocodile that lived 125 million years ago, suggest that the land hunter measured more than 10 meters from the snout to the tail.
Researchers found vertebrae and parts of a pelvis and limb bone in a rock eroded by a rock that fell on a beach in Compton Bay in southwestern Isle of Wight.
“Of the bones we have, this animal may be the largest predatory dinosaur ever discovered in Europe,” said Dr. Neil Gostling, a paleobiologist at the University of Southampton. “It’s straight from Compton.”
While dinosaurs were terrestrial creatures, spinosaurs are known to spend a lot of time in or near water, with fish making up a significant portion of their diet. It is not clear whether they caught fish or cleaned them up after being dumped on the shoreline.
Bone fragments of Spinosaurus from White Rock. Photo: PeerJ Life & Environment
Chris Barker, a doctoral student who led the study, said the animal was “huge”, although too few dinosaurs have yet to be recovered to determine if it is a new species of spinosaurus or not. “It’s unfortunate that only a small amount of material is known, but they are enough to show that it was a huge creature,” he said.
The discovery follows previous work on spinosaurs by the University of Southampton team, which announced the discovery of two new species in 2021.
The dinosaur family, which contains spinosaurs, may have originated in Europe about 150 million years ago and has since become more widespread. Details of the remains, which are on display at the Museum of Dinosaur Island in Sandown, have been published in the journal PeerJ Life and Environment.
Scientists named the latest find the Spinosaurus White Rock after the geological layer in which the bones were found. Most of the remains were discovered by Nick Chase, a British dinosaur hunter who died shortly before the Covid pandemic.
Darren Nish, a paleontologist and co-author of the study, said the new remains reinforce the team’s belief that dinosaur dinosaurs originated and diversified in Western Europe before becoming more widespread. “We hope that more remains will appear in time,” he said. “As it is currently known only from fragments, we have not given it an official scientific name.”
Scars found on the bones, including tunnels drilled into the pelvic bone, suggest the creature became food for cleaners after it died. Another co-author, Jeremy Lockwood, a doctoral student at the University of Portsmouth and the Museum of Natural History, said the holes in the pelvic bone were the size of a finger and could have been caused by larvae eating the bones of a cleaner. beetle.
Now the team hopes to prepare thin sections of bone that can be examined under a microscope to learn more about the growth rate and potential age of the dinosaur.
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