{"id":1442,"date":"2024-07-10T12:03:34","date_gmt":"2024-07-10T12:03:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/10\/most-complete-dinosaur-fossil-in-a-century-discovered-on-the-isle-of-wight\/"},"modified":"2024-07-10T12:03:34","modified_gmt":"2024-07-10T12:03:34","slug":"most-complete-dinosaur-fossil-in-a-century-discovered-on-the-isle-of-wight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/10\/most-complete-dinosaur-fossil-in-a-century-discovered-on-the-isle-of-wight\/","title":{"rendered":"Most complete dinosaur fossil in a century discovered on the Isle of Wight"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The fossil of a herbivorous dinosaur, as big as an American male bison, has been discovered on the Isle of Wight. <\/p>\n

It is the most complete dinosaur skeleton discovered in the UK in a century, with 149 bones in total.<\/p>\n

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The hefty dinosaur, now called Comptonatus chasei, roamed southern England around 125 million years ago and would have weighed as much as an African elephant.<\/p>\n

The isle of Wight only became separated from the mainland around 7,000 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was likely to be a herding animal, so possibly large herds of these heavy dinosaurs may have been thundering around if spooked by predators on the floodplains,\u201d said Jeremy Lockwood, a PhD student at the University of Portsmouth.<\/p>\n

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The dinosaur belongs to a group of herbivorous dinosaurs known as iguanodontians, large, bulky creatures often described as the \u201ccows of the Cretaceous period\u201d by palaeontologists.<\/p>\n

It was discovered by fossil hunter Nick Chase who sadly died of cancer just before the COVID-19 pandemic. The species is named after him.<\/p>\n

It took Mr Lockwood and his colleagues several years before the specimen could be prepared for analysis.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cI began looking at the specimen six years ago and described it as part of my PhD thesis, which took five years.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it was quite a long journey from finding to publication.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paying tribute to Mr Chase, Mr Lockwood said: \u201cNick had a phenomenal nose for finding dinosaur bones.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe collected fossils daily in all weathers and donated them to museums,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was hoping we\u2019d spend our dotage collecting together as we were of similar ages, but sadly that wasn\u2019t to be the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite his many wonderful discoveries over the years, including the most complete Iguanodon skull ever found in Britain, this is the first dinosaur to be named after him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nick Chase also discovered the remains of Europe\u2019s largest-ever land-based predator dinosaur on the island, <\/strong>which were revealed last year.<\/p>\n

The Isle of Wight has become a fossil hunters\u2019 paradise in recent years, with eight extinct species being named there in the last five years.<\/p>\n

Mr Lockwood said the latest \u201cremarkable find\u201d shows southern England may have once had \u201cone of the world\u2019s most diverse ecosystems\u201d.<\/p>\n

In fact, the Natural History Museum describes the Isle of Wight as \u201cone of the UK\u2019s richest dinosaur fossil sites\u201d.<\/p>\n

Last year, a new species of armoured dinosaur<\/strong> was found on the island and bones from a new species in the Tyrannosaurus rex family<\/strong> were discovered four years ago by two fossil hunters on separate holidays.<\/p>\n

In 2021, two species of large predatory dinosaur were revealed as well.<\/p>\n

Scientists named one of them the \u201chorned crocodile-faced hell heron\u201d, or Ceratosuchops inferodios in Latin.<\/p>\n

One of the palaeontologists involved in the find said he\u2019d been waiting for a discovery like that on the Isle of Wight for a couple of decades, but that finding two in close succession was a \u201chuge surprise\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This post appeared first on sky.com<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fossil of a herbivorous dinosaur, as big as an American male bison, has been…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1443,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}