The specimen has a unique bulbous nasal bone. It was identified by a retired family physician while cataloging iguanodon bones.
A new species of dinosaur has been discovered with a unique feature: an extremely large nose. It was identified by a retired family physician, Jeremy Lockood, who is now studying for a PhD at the University of Portsmouth in England. The man had set himself the task of cataloging every iguanodon bone discovered on the Isle of Wight. Just as he was sorting bones from the collections of the Natural History Museum in London and the Dinosaur Island Museum on the Isle of Wight, he discovered a specimen with a “bulbous” nasal bone that had never been observed before. The study was published in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology.
The discovery of the big-nosed dinosaur
“For over 100 years, we’ve only seen two types of dinosaurs on the Isle of Wight: Iguanodon bernissartensis and Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis,” Lockood said. “I was convinced that the subtle differences between the bones would reveal a new species, so I decided to measure, photograph and study the anatomy of each bone. It took four years of unpacking and study to reconstruct the skull of a specimen that had been in storage since 1978. The specimens had several features that set it apart, among them the number of teeth, which in Mantellisaurus is 23 or 24, while in the reconstructed animal it is 28. “It also had a bulbous nose, while other species have very straight noses. Overall, these and other small differences obviously made it a new species,” Lockood explained.
The characteristics of the big-nosed dinosaur
The dinosaur must have been a herbivore about 8 meters long and weighing 900 kg. Lockwood, in collaboration with Professor David Martill, of the University of Portsmouth, and Dr. Susannah Maidment, of the Natural History Museum, named the new species Brighstoneus simmondsi. The specimen is named after the village of Brighstone on the Isle of Wight, which is near the excavation site, and the last part is in honor of Keith Simmonds, an amateur collector, who was involved in the research.
The discovery of this new species suggests that there were many more iguanodontian dinosaurs in the early Cretaceous of the United Kingdom than previously thought. “It seems so unlikely that two animals would be exactly the same for millions of years without change,” Lockwood said. With the identification of Brighstoneus, the convention of assigning fossils found on the Isle of Wight directly to the species Iguanodon or Mantellisaurus should therefore be reconsidered.
Recently, it has also been discovered that dinosaurs were social animals. While in Australia, fossils of the largest “dragon” that lived on the continent have been found.
Stefania Bernardini