Reconstruction of the head of Brighstoneus simmondsi. Image credit: John Sibbick.
SciNews has a story about a newly-identified dinosaur. Named Brightstoneus simmondsi, the animal lived about 127 million years ago during the early Cretaceous Period in what is now the Isle of Wight. It weighted about 900 kg (1980 lbs) and measured about 8 meters (26 feet) long. The description was published in the journal Systematic Paleontology.
It belonged to Iguanodontia, a major group of ornithischian dinosaurs that originated in the Middle Jurassic epoch and became increasingly widespread and diverse during the Cretaceous period.
The partial skeleton of Brighstoneus simmondsi was recovered from the Wessex Formation of the Isle of Wight, southern England.
“Until now, iguanodontian material found from the Wealden Group on the Isle of Wight has usually been referred to as one of these two dinosaurs: with more gracile fossil bones assigned to Mantellisaurus and the larger and more robust material assigned to Iguanodon,” said Jeremy Lockwood, a Ph.D, student in the School of Environment, Geography and Geosciences at the University of Portsmouth and the Department of Earth Sciences at the Natural History Museum, London, and his colleagues.
“However, when we were examining the specimen, we came across several unique traits that distinguished it from either of these other dinosaurs.”
“For me, the number of teeth was a sign. Mantellisaurus has 23 or 24, but this has 28. It also had a bulbous nose, whereas the other species have very straight noses. Altogether, these and other small differences made it very obviously a new species.”
The discovery of Brighstoneus simmondsi suggests that there were far more iguanodontian dinosaurs in what is now the United Kingdom during the Early Cretaceous epoch than previously thought.
