Europe’s largest carnivorous dino fossil found in UK
LONDON: Fossilized bones discovered on a rocky seashore on England’s Isle of Wight are the remains of a meat-eating dinosaur that may be larger than any other known from Europe, a beast that was a cousin of the biggest carnivorous dinosaur species on record.
Most of the bones of the twolegged spinosaurid were found by the late local collector Nick Chase, who dedicated his life to combing the beaches of the island on England’s southern coast for dinosaur remains.
Researchers at the University of Southampton then used the few bones available to identify what they have called the “White Rock spinosaurid”, they said in a study published in the journal PeerJ. The paleontologists said they found parts of the skeleton of the dinosaur, which lived about 125 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period, including bones of the back, hips and tail, some limb fragments but no skull or teeth. Based on the partial remains, they estimated that the dinosaur exceeded 33 feet long and perhaps reached much more.
“The size of the specimen is impressive. It is one of the biggest - and possibly the biggest known land predator ever to stalk Europe,” said Chris Barker, a University of Southampton doctoral student and lead author of the study.
Based in part on a series of small grooves on the top of the tail vertebra, they concluded that it belonged to a group of dinosaurs called spinosaurs that included Spinosaurus, which lived about 95 million years ago and at about 50 feet long is considered the longest-known dinosaur predator. The fossils were spotted on the surface along Compton Bay on the southwestern coast of the Isle of Wight. The dinosaur inhabited a lagoon environment populated by plant-eating dinosaurs and flying reptiles. At the time, sea levels were higher and large parts of Europe were submerged.
The Isle of Wight has become one of Europe’s richest locales for dinosaur remains. The same team of researchers last year announced the discovery of two other Cretaceous spinosaurs, both measuring about 30 feet long. “This new material corroborates our previous work that highlights Europe as an important region for spinosaur diversification,” Barker said.