Flash
10/7/24
Dinosaur Fossil Discovered
On the Isle of Wight you can find evidence of the dinosaurs that once roamed there. Dinosaur fossil footprints can be found on the beaches and many fossil bones have been found.
But now information has been released about an exciting dinosaur fossil discovery. The dinosaur fossil was discovered over ten years ago in the cliffs of Compton Bay on the Isle of Wight. Since then scientists have been studying information about the fossils. It is exciting as it is the most complete dinosaur found in Europe in the last 100 years. The new species of dinosaur has been named Comptonatus Chasei. 149 bones of the dinosaur were discovered, including its skull, teeth, spine, hip and leg bones, by a man called Nick Chase, and it was named in honour of him and the place it was found.
The dinosaur would have lived in the what is now the south of England and the Isle of Wight (as they would have been together at that time, not separated by water) 125 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period. It would of belonged to a group of herbivore dinosaurs known as iguanodontians. They were large, heavy dinosaurs about the size of elephant, described as the cows of the Cretaceous period! It is thought they would have lived in herds. They know this from other evidence they have found, such as the amount of fossil footprints they have found.
Nick Chase and others have made many discoveries in the Isle of Wight, but this really is a special discovery as it is so complete. It is also the first dinosaur to be named after him.
Previous important discoveries by him also included finding an Iguanodon skull and the remains of the largest ever predator dinosaur discovered in the whole of Europe. They only found a small sample of its bones but it is thought that the dinosaur would have been about ten metres tall when alive!
What is a dinosaur fossil?
Dinosaur fossils are the reason we know that these amazing once roamed the Earth, way before we were here. But what are they?
Fossils are the remains of dinosaurs that once were alive (you can also find fossils of other animals, plants, eggs and even footprints that were created and then hardened to rock). When the dinosaurs died most of the time they just rotted away. But very occasionally something special happened to save them forever!
Most fossils are found in rock that once was underwater. Many fossils are found on the coast, or where there there was once a lake or river that might have flooded the land around it. To create a fossil, after a dinosaur died sometimes layers of earth, such as mud or sand built up over it quite quickly, maybe caused by water flowing over it. Over time, these layers then built up and turned hard into rock and put a lot of pressure on what was underneath. Water then seeps into the dinosaur bones and minerals in the water kind of replaces the bone, and creates a hard fossil. This is not a quick process and would take thousands or even millions of years!
We are very lucky some of these amazing fossils have then been found, millions of years later. Just think of how many there must be that haven’t been discovered yet and think of the species of dinosaurs we might not have discovered either!
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