In collaboration with the Natural History Museum, researchers recently discovered new dinosaur species and genus, which they described to have originated on the Isle of Wight.
As specified in an Earth.com report, it may seem easy to assume that most people know almost everything about dinosaurs. After all, they lived hundreds of millions of years ago.
This is not the case, though, with new studies regularly coming out about dinosaurs discoveries, including a new example from the University of Portsmouth.
Specifically, the team of researchers has identified and called the dinosaur species the "Brightstoneus simmondsi, after the nearby town of Brightstone and Keith Simmonds, the original specimen discoverer.
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Mantellisaurus bones
'Dinosauria'
The Isle of Wight has, for a long time already, since been linked to the discovery of dinosaurs, even generating important samples that led to Sir Richard Owen developing the term "Dinosauria."
The newly identified dinosaur species fall into the group of iguanodontian, which comprises the popular "Iguanodon and Manellisaurus."
Until recently, dinosaur material discovered on the Isle of Wight has been presumed to originate from one of the said two dinosaurs, Mirror specified in a similar report.
Nonetheless, upon examining the specimen, Jeremy Lockwood, the researcher, discovered features that distinguished it from the present discoveries.
'Herbivore' Dinosaur
Dr. Lockwood explained, for him, the number of the species' teeth was a sign. Mantellisaurus has 23 or 24, although this new find has 28 teeth.
It had a round nose, as well, while the other species have an extremely straight nose. Altogether, these, as well as other slight differences, made it quite evidently new species.
The dinosaur was found to be an herbivore that weighed roughly 900 kilograms and sized up to eight meters long. Its discovery suggested substantially more iguanodontian dinosaurs in the United Kingdom throughout the Early Cretaceous period, as detailed in a ScienceDirect report, compared to when they were first approximated, and that other specimens found in the site needed to be reassessed.
Dr. Lockwood explained, they are looking at six, probably "seven million years of deposits," and he thinks the genus lengths have been over approximated in the past.
He added that if that's the case on the island, many more new species could be seen. It appears so unlikely to have two animals being precisely the same for millions of years minus change.
Diversity of Iguanodontian Dinosaurs
Adding to the thoughts of Lockwood, scientist Dr. Susannah Maidment from the Natural History Museum and the study's co-author said, this new species' description presents a greater diversity of iguanodontian dinosaurs in this new species in the UK's Early Cretaceous Period compared to the previously realized.
In addition to that, it has also shown that the hundred-year-old paradigm that gracile iguanodontian bones discovered on the island belong to Mantellisaurus and massive elements belong to Iguanodon cannot be substantiated anymore.
The study, A new hadrosauriform dinosaur from the Wessex Formation, Wealden Group (Early Cretaceous), of the Isle of Wight, southern England, was published early this month in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.
Report about the new dinosaur species discovered in the Isle of Wight is shown on BBC News's YouTube video below:
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