Britain is the original Jurassic park (4/17/2008)

An armour-plated, spiky Polacanthus is attacked by Neovenators. Both of these dinosaurs lived on the Isle of Wight. Credit: Luis Rey

Nearly every town and village in Britain was once a stomping ground for dinosaurs, a surprisingly high number of which may have originated here in the country which first discovered them, according to the first major review of Britain's dinosaur history.

The review was completed by experts at the University of Portsmouth and takes in every known species and genus of the creatures that thrived here between 200 million and 65 million years ago.

Some of the most complete fossil skeletons ever dug up have been secreted away in private collections and never studied and more than half the fossils found are broken or incomplete. But despite these difficulties, reviewers have established that 108 species once roamed Britain. And there may well be more surprises still buried deep in rock beneath our feet.

Britain was the first country to discover dinosaurs when in 1824 a scientist described a Megalosaurus unearthed in Oxfordshire. Since then hundreds of species have been unearthed throughout the world.

Dr Darren Naish and Dr Dave Martill of the palaeobiology research group in the School of Earth and Environmental Studies, have had their exhaustive record of Britain's dinosaur heritage published this week by the Geological Society of London.

Dr Naish said: "No-one has ever done this before and it needed doing. Other countries may have more and/or better dinosaur fossils but we have the longest record of research and, for a small country, we have a very rich dinosaur record."

The record will eventually need updating as new species are discovered all the time.

Dr Naish said: "We regularly find entirely new and exciting animals - look at Xenoposeidon, which we only described last year, and there are others. I know of several new species that are being worked on at the moment and will be published in the near future."

The report says that a significant number of dinosaurs almost certainly originated here and that Britain was a crossroads for species moving from the Americas to Europe via Greenland when the land masses were joined. Among those thought to have originated here are certain groups of plated stegosaurs, predatory theropods and sauropods, which when first described were thought to be giant sea-going crocodiles.

In the 184 years since the first dinosaur was discovered experts, enthusiasts and accidental discoverers have unearthed everything from dinosaur jaw bones to dinosaur egg shells from the Isle of Skye and Ireland to the so-called Jurassic Coast in the south. Even where no bone fossils have ever been dug up, footprints fossils prove dinosaurs made the entire United Kingdom their home.

Dr Naish said: "Although much British dinosaur material is fragmentary, superbly preserved specimens have been recovered, including near-complete specimens and examples with soft-tissue preservation.

"Many of our best discoveries are made by amateurs; they are vitally important for our field. Many of these people donate or sell their finds to museums but unfortunately a few collectors keep the fossils and are not interested in seeing them formally described."

Some of this country's best preserved and most intact fossil specimens have been found on the coast and in quarries where layers of rock are newly exposed. But one group of dinosaur the reviewers concluded never lived in the UK is the Marginocephalians ('margin-headed') dinosaurs which includes Triceratops, one of the most recognised dinosaurs and a favourite in children's books pictured warring with Tyrannosaurus rex.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by the University of Portsmouth

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