Telegraph reporter Roger Highfield visited Dinosaur Isle to follow up the story of the pterosaur bone found by six-year old Owain Lewis whilst on holiday on the Isle of Wight.
Click here for the Daily Telegraph article.
A six year-old boy has unearthed rare pterosaur bones on the Isle of Wight.
Owain Lewis was on holiday with his family when he discovered the fossil - part of a flying reptile called a pterosaur - while hunting for the relics at Compton Bay near Freshwater.
The 120 million year old find comprises wing bones of the extinct flying reptile which soared above the skies of the Isle of Wight during the Lower Cretaceous Period. At the time the area was a coastal lagoon occupied by crocodiles and dinosaurs.
Pterosaurs are rare finds becasue their bones are very delicate, like those of birds which also do not preserve well. They may represent an Ornithocheirid pterosaur which had a four metre wingspan - a new species - one of which was found at Sandown four years ago (see text below). Alternatively, the bones may come from another type of Pterosaur, Istiodactylus which had an estimated wingspan of five metres.
Owain and his father Glyn reported their find to experts at the Dinosaur Isle Museum in Sandown. The bones have since been sent to the Natural History Museum in London where they will be analysed by the museum's pterosaur experts.
Owain's mum Kaye said: "Most six year old boys are interested in dinosaurs but Owain seems to be exceptionally keen. He is always coming back with boxes of things he has found.
"When he went to the Island, he knew he would get a few finds and he is chuffed to bits that he has discovered something so important. We would like to think he would follow a career in palaeontology but we will see."
Dr Martin Munt Curator of Geology at the museum said: "The bones are folded against each other which is usually seen when such finds are made.
"We are very pleased that Owain brought the find to us. It re-enforces our reputation as one of the main areas in the United Kingdom where anyone can find rare dinosaur bones, just by going out for a walk on the beach."
Dinosaur Isle maintained its high standard of environmental awareness by winning Gold again in the Green Island Environmental Award scheme. The museum has retained gold for three years running. This year the museum grounds have been enhanced with a drought-tolerant garden planted with salt-tolerant species.
The Isle of Wight's Footprint Trust and a local conservation group 'Green Gym' rolled up their sleeves to create a drought-tolerant garden in a bed in front of Dinosaur Isle in spring 2007. Experts in the Council's Parks and Countryside section designed the planting scheme; it should also be resistant to salt spray in this exposed coastal location.The scheme was an initial idea of the Footprint Trust. It was created due to concerns about climate change, which is causing a dramatic transformation in weather patterns, leading to record breaking heat waves and droughts accross Europe."If carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues to be increased by human activities the environment will warm up to a climate suitable for dinosaurs" said Ray Harrington-Vail of the Footprint Trust.The garden will require little or no artificial watering and will also be beneficial to birds and butterflies. Plants chosen include spurge, ice plant, seakale, sea holly, silver spear, fountain grass and New Zealand flax. This work is part of the Footprint Trust's Waterworks project supported by the AONB Sustainable Development Fund and EU Leader+. It links to the IW Council's One Million Blooms initiative, which seeks to create drought-friendly planting in parks and open spaces.In addition to planting the scheme has been complemented by the use of feature rocks and gravel sourced from Bardon Vectis. Island Waste Compost derived from recycled garden waste has also been used to avoid peat-based products.
For the second year running Dinosaur Isle was awarded the Gold Standard at the Green Island Award ceremonies at Cowes on the 25th of May 2006. In addition to its Gold Award for meeting strict criteria for its environmental impact Dinosaur Isle was nominated for Attraction of the Year alongside Ventnor Botanical Gardens and Chessel Pottery Barns. Dinosaur Isle and Ventnor Botanical Gardens (the winner) are both currently run by the same part of the Isle of Wight Council thus demonstrating the Council's efforts in reducing its environmental footprint. The awards were presented at the prestigious Cowes Yacht Haven. Peter Pusey (general manager) and Trevor Price (Community Learning Officer) represented the museum at the presentation. Over 90 tourism related businesses are taking part in the scheme and the trend is for this number to increase in future years.
The National Lottery have awarded Dinosaur Isle a Blue Plaque in recognition of its contribution towards the educational experience it provides for school children.
Dinosaur Isle is aiming to produce an e-newsletter to keep its many fans aware of what has been happening in the past months.
The first issue is now available from our Newsletters page.
For further information please contact Trevor Price, Community Learning Officer
tel: (01983) 404344
Around 125 million years ago, the carcase of a pterosaur was washed into the mud at the bottom of a river. It lay there undisturbed until a few years ago, when coastal erosion removed it from its rocky tomb. Parts of the skull and wing bones were found on the beach by several different local collectors. Other parts may have been washed away already.
Pterosaurs were winged reptiles that lived at the same time as dinosaurs. The earliest pterosaurs are found in Triassic rocks in Italy, around 235 million years old. They survived until the end of the Cretaceous Period, by which point many large forms existed, with wingspans of over 12 metres. The reason for their extinction 65 million years ago is a mystery, but it was the end for many other animal and plant groups on Earth.
The new pterosaur from Sandown Bay belongs to a family called the Ornithocheiridae (‘bird hand’). They are large pterosaurs with crested skulls, long pointed teeth, and wingspans of around 4-6 metres. Ornithocheirids have been found in Cretaceous rocks in many parts of the world, particularly the UK, Brazil and North Africa.
The Sandown pterosaur is different from any that have been previously discovered, so it has been given a new name: Caulkicephalus trimicrodon. The generic name is derived from ‘caulkhead’, the traditional local name for people who caulked ships in the Solent shipyards. The species trimicrodon refers to the three small teeth near the front of the jaw.
The bones, which include the braincase, upper jaw and wing bones, were found on Yaverland beach by G. Leng, T. Winch, D. Davies, M. New, M. Munt, and L. Steel. The new pterosaur is described in the latest issue of the scientific journal Cretaceous Research, by a scientific team including Dinosaur Isle Museum, University of Portsmouth and the Humboldt Museum in Berlin.
The full reference is:Steel, L., Martill, D. M., Unwin, D. M. & Winch, J. D. (2005) A new pterodactyloid pterosaur from the Wessex Formation (Lower Cretaceous) of the Isle of Wight, England. Cretaceous Research (2005): 1-13. For further images and information please visit the Recent Finds and Research page.
National Geographic magazine has listed the Isle of Wight as being one of the most significant sites in the world for dinosaur finds.
In the August 2005 issue of the internationally renowned magazine, Thomas Holtz Jr, a Tyrannosaurus expert based at the University of Maryland, lists his top seven dinosaur sites in the world. He lists the Isle of Wight along with Liaoning Province, China; Bahariya, Egypt; Alberta, Canada; San Juan, Argentina; Ukhaa Tolgod, Mongolia and the western USA, confirming that despite rapid advances in the study of dinosaurs, the Island still has international recognition for its important dinosaur discoveries.The listing confirms that the Island remains the most important dinosaur site in Europe. The Island is classed with sites which have revolutionised our understanding of the dinosaurs and their world. As the study of dinosaurs is one of the most rapidly advancing areas in palaeontology, this underlines the global importance of the Island's dinosaur heritage.The significance of the Island is underlined by the fact that many of the listed sites cover hundreds of square miles, while the dinosaur rocks on the Island are restricted to about nine kilometres of narrow cliff exposure. The discovery of dinosaurs on the Island predates some of the other sites by as much as 150 years and the Island still has much to offer with new discoveries like Eotyrannus and the opportunity to look anew at familiar dinosaurs such as Iguanodon.The largest publicly owned collection of Island dinosaur finds is held at Dinosaur Isle Museum at Sandown, operated by the Isle of Wight Council. This year the collections have been accessed by researchers and students looking at carnivorous dinosaurs, fossil crocodiles, fossil turtles, jaws and teeth of herbivorous dinosaurs, amber and fossils from the Chalk. Earlier this year an international gathering of more than thirty specialists in fossil insects examined the collections. Next year the museum will act as the field base for another international gathering of geologists and palaeontologists, this time specialising in terrestrial ecosystems from the time of the dinosaurs, during which staff of the museum will lead field work and contribute talks.For further information please contact Martin Munt, Curator of Geology
Congratulations are due to Assistant Curator Lorna Steel who graduated with a PhD at Portsmouth University on the 18th July 2005. Dr Steel's PhD was awarded after successful completion of a programme of research in Studies on the palaeohistology of pterosaur bone. Lorna is now auditioning for a part on the set of Hogwarts.
What can bone histology tell us about pterosaurs?The study of pterosaur bone histology dates back to the middle of the 19th Century, but systematic studies only began recently. Pterosaur bones are predominantly composed of highly vascular fibrolamellar bone, indicating that pterosaurs grew rapidly. However, cranial and pedal bones contain LAGs (lines of arrested growth) which record pauses in bone deposition. Pterosaurs had determinate growth, and deposited an endosteal lamella and a periosteal EFS (external fundamental system) at maturity. Pterosaurian epiphyseal growth plates contain endosteal bone and calcified cartilage. Although endosteal reworking is extensive, secondary osteons are rare. Some smaller elements contain an orthogonal plywood-like tissue, composed of alternating lamellae, which may have biomechanical significance. Not all bones are supported internally by trabeculae; in some cases endosteal ridges may provide reinforcement. Pterosaurian reproductive mineral dynamics probably did not involve the deposition of a specialised bony tissue within the lumen of the long bones. Comparative bone histology can distinguish between bones of small theropod dinosaurs and pterosaurs, but cannot reliably separate birds from pterosaurs or distinguish between pterosaur taxa.
For further information please contact Lorna Steel
Bones from the biggest dinosaur so far reported by scientists in Europe have been discovered in the Isle of Wight. A single neck bone from the 125 million-year-old sauropod dinosaur – a long-necked plant-eating brontosaur – measures three-quarters of a metre long. Researchers from the Universities of Portsmouth and Oregon examined the bone and compared it to others found in the UK, and elsewhere, and were able to identify it as from the largest known dinosaur yet discovered in Europe.
The Isle of Wight’s Dinosaur Isle museum has recently acquired five Velociraptorine teeth – from dinosaurs related to the Velociraptors, made famous in the Jurassic Park movies.
The teeth date from the Early Cretaceous period and are approximately 120 million years old. They are the first record of this kind of dinosaur on the Isle of Wight and only the second from the UK.
The teeth come from a type of dinosaur closely related to Velociraptor (they belong to the same subfamily Velociraptorinae, of the family Dromaeosauride).
Three of the teeth were collected on the Isle of Wight between 1972 and 2003 by Mr Steve Sweetman and have been donated to the museum; two more were purchased by Dinosaur Isle Museum from another Island collector.
Steve Sweetman, a postgraduate student studying for a PhD at The University of Portsmouth, is writing a scientific paper on them for the Journal Cretaceous Research.
Aspects of the tooth growth morphology and a high denticle size difference index (an index obtained from the size and distribution of tooth serrations) allowed the identification to be made.
Curator of Dinosaur Isle, Martin Munt said, “The large size of the Isle of Wight teeth suggests an animal that may have been comparable in size to Utahraptor, an extremely large dromaeosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Utah. The Isle of Wight animal is likely to have been a large slender, fast moving predator perhaps as long as six metres. Along with its powerful jaws armed with backward-curving serrated teeth it is likely to have possessed long arms with clawed grasping hands and a sickle-like toe-claw, handy for disembowelling prey. Such an animal would have hunted small mammals and reptiles and small to medium sized dinosaurs. There is some evidence that such dinosaurs hunted in packs and that this would have increased the size range of prey that could be tackled.
“These teeth are an important find for Dinosaur Isle and also for palaeontology, as each new find brings us a clearer picture of the Cretaceous period in this region.”
For further information please contact Martin Munt or Lorna Steel
Dinosaur Isle Museum played host to an international seminar on British Dinosaurs on the 5th and 6th of November 2003.
The meeting saw presentations by many leading Dinosaur experts, including palaeontologists from Britain, Spain, France and the USA. The theme of the seminar was to place British dinosaur fossils in their global context.
The meeting was convened by Dinosaur Isle Curator Martin Munt and University of Portsmouth academic David Martill. Sponsorship came from The Palaeontological Association, Wightlink, the University of Portsmouth and The Isle of Wight Council.
Martin Munt said, “It is quite an historical event as it will be the first meeting of its kind dedicated to British dinosaurs. The Isle of Wight, with its new dinosaur museum, has been a focus of dinosaur discoveries in Europe, and is a natural host for such a seminar. “
Talks took place on the 5th November at the Quay Arts Centre in Newport, beginning at 10am, finishing at about 6pm. Approximately 100 delegates attended. On the 6th November there was a field trip to the south-west coast. A reception for the delegates was held at Dinosaur Isle Museum on the evening of the 5th when they had the opportunity to view the museum and some of its rare and exciting dinosaur fossils.
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