DINOSAUR ISLAND cont.......

Individual petrified dinosaur bones are being washed out of the slippery mud flows and crumbly cliffs in large quantities, but the vast majority are sucked out to sea or ground down to pebbles on the shingle beaches. Complete skeletons are much more of a rarity, yet on average a nearly whole dinosaur will reappear every few years. In the last ten years alone three important, near-complete dino-corpses have been collected.

The commonest and best known of all the island dinosaurs is a plant-eater called Iguanodon. This creature usually walked on it's back legs, but could sometimes use the smaller front ones as well, it's most distinctive feature was a spike on each thumb. Iguanodon stood about 5 metres high and was 10 metres long thanks to an impressive tail. Fossilized bones of this creature are turning up on island beaches almost daily, but it is much harder to find a good example of the leaf-like teeth which resemble those of a modern Iguana (hence the name). As many as three hundred Iguanodon skeletons have fallen out of the Island's cliffs since records began, which is hardly surprising when you consider that they must have lived in huge herds. Many more must still be hidden beneath our feet.

Another well known early Isle of Wight resident was Hypsilophoden, which looked something like a small Iguanodon. About thirty complete skeletons have been found of this two legged, fast running vegetarian, and they are all animals about two metres long. The Isle of Wight also had it's own armoured dinosaur called Polacanthus, a sort of prehistoric reptilian tank equipped with spines and a thick defensive shield. There have only been three decent Polacanthus skeletons ever found, the best being unearthed in 1994 by a local woman out walking her dog. Unfortunately, none of these Polacanthi has a head so we can only guess that the skull was small and bony enough to protect the minuscule brain. In 1992 lots of bones of a Brachiosaurus-like dinosaur were pieced together to make about 30 per cent of a skeleton. This discovery may help to make sense of the countless bits and pieces of long necked vegetarian dinosaurs which have been found here over the years. All we can say at the moment is that there definitely were creatures like Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus on the Isle of Wight although what species they belong to is anybody's guess.

Enough of vegetarians. When you mention dinosaurs to most people they invariably think of the famous Tyrannosaurus rex, which used to be the biggest meat-eater of them all until some spoilsport found a bigger one in Argentina which has been named Gigantosaurus. T. rex will always get the publicity, however, because of it's association with 'Jurrasic Park', a pop group with flared trousers and a brand of cooking oil. As for Isle of Wight meat-eaters, you could probably fit all of their fossilized bones into a Fiat Panda and none of them would belong to T. rex. What we had instead was Megalosaurus, a smaller creature with three fingers rather than two. Judging by the fossil evidence there weren't many Megalosaurus knocking about, but luckily a nearly complete one turned up recently and is still being cleaned up for it's debut in next year's dinosaur books.

So these were the main characters in our Isle of Wight dinosaur story. Their anatomical studies fill many a scientific journal, but just as interesting are the people who found and continue to find dinosaur fossils on this tiny island. Stories of personal greed, corruption, sex and violence will be exclusively revealed next time.

Martin Simpson, 37, is a freelance palaeontologist who runs a fossil shop at BlackgangChine Theme Park on the Isle of Wight. In the summer he organizes regular fossil hunting expeditions to local beaches in search of dinosaurs, ammonites and other fossils. Martin has written a popular book about the geology of the Isle of Wight entitled 'Fossil Hunting on Dinosaur Island' as well as several scientific articles. He is interested to hear from anyone who collects fossils or has an interest in dinosaurs.
He can be reached at Blackgang Chine on Tel 01983 730180 or Fax: 01983 731267