There are several places in the world that attract dinosaurs. Utah location. Cedar Mountain Formationfossil layers China, Liaoning, Alberta Dinosaur Provincial Park. In the UK, he one of such hotspots is the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight is a 148-square-mile island currently known as a popular summer vacation spot. Nevertheless, many dinosaurs have been found on this small island. Europe’s largest prehistoric predator and 60 million year old tyrannosaur before the symbolic tyrannosaurus rex.
[Related: Celebrate 30 years of Jurassic Park with these recent dinosaur discoveries.]
However, even on an island slightly larger than the city of Atlanta, there is always something new to discover. This time, scientists have found his second armored dinosaur on the island, in the Wessex Formation dating back to the early Cretaceous period. The new name is Vectiperta Baretti explained in a study published in systematic paleontology journal June 15th.
The discovery was Using fossils first discovered in the 1980s, is of particular importance because it reopens a book on the development of Ankylosaurus dinosaurs in the region. Previously, there was only one Ankylosaurus. Polacanthus Foxi, Found all over the island.of Polacanthus fox First discovered in 1865 and up to the present day Vectiperta Baretti It was just put together with those fossils.
“For virtually 142 years, all antherosaur fossils on the Isle of Wight have been assigned to the island’s famous dinosaur, Polacanthus foxey,” said a researcher in the Department of Geosciences at the National Museum of History, London. Stuart Pond, lead author of the study, said: said in a statement. “Now that we have described this new species, all these findings need to be revisited.”
This newly described dinosaur has a significantly different pelvis and different neck and back vertebrae compared to Polacanthus. It is also characterized by distinctive blade-like recurved spikes along its back, said Susie Maidment, a dinosaur researcher at the National Museum of History. statement. Indeed, this difference and phylogenetic analysis led the authors to believe that: VectipeltaThe closest relatives may have come all the way from China.
“And when we put Vectiperta into a large-scale evolutionary analysis to clarify the relationship between all these different dinosaurs, we found that Polacanthus and Vectiperta weren’t really that closely related,” says Maidment. said Mr. “In terms of Ankylosaurus evolution, these are quite far apart, so it’s very clear that this is a separate species.”
[Related: Feisty ankylosaurs clubbed each other with their tails.]
Early Cretaceous (about 145-100 million years ago) Vectipelta We would have been free to roam, Pangea would have split, and the climate would have been much warmer around the world. Europe at this time was a series of islands, including today’s southern England and the Isle of Wight. There was little or no ice on either pole, and sea levels were about 557 feet higher than today.
Ankylosaurus was generally a plant-eating animal, but like its best-loved Jurassic period, stegosaurusThey were things that should never be messed with. Those bony, spiky plates were made to ward off carnivorous predators.
