Sands of Isle of Wight yield two new Spinosaurus relatives

Sept. 29 (UPI) -- Dinosaur bones recovered from the beaches of the Isle of Wight belonged to novel species, close relatives of the giant theropod Spinosaurus.

The remains, detailed Wednesday in the journal Scientific Reports, were initially discovered by local fossil-hunters on the beaches of Brighton.

The complete excavation was carried out by paleontologists from the Dinosaur Isle Museum over a period of several years.

"We realized after the two snouts were found that this would be something rare and unusual," Jeremy Lockwood, a fossil collector from the Isle of Wight, said in a press release. "Then it just got more and more amazing as several collectors found and donated other parts of this enormous jigsaw to the museum."

After detailed anatomical analysis, paleontologists in Britain determined the dinosaur remains comprised two new species of spinosaurid.

Like their cousin Spinosaurus, the two species -- Ceratosuchops inferodios, the "horned crocodile-faced hell heron," and Riparovenator milnerae, the "Milner's riverbank hunter" -- sported long, flat, crocodile-like jaws and sharp teeth atop a tyrannosaurus-like body.

Both dinosaur species, which lived 125 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous, likely adopted a heron-like approach to predation, stalking the edges of swamps and lakes, snapping up fish and small reptiles from the banks and shallows of freshwater ecosystems.

"It might sound odd to have two similar and closely related carnivores in an ecosystem, but this is actually very common for both dinosaurs and numerous living ecosystems," said study co-author David Hone, paleontologists Queen Mary University of London.

Both of the new species stretched nearly 30 feet head to tail and snatched prey using three-foot long jaws.

The discovery of two new spinosaurid species on a small British island suggests spinosaurs may have originated and diversified in Europe before dispersing across Asia, Africa and South America.

"This work has brought together universities, Dinosaur Isle Museum and the public to reveal these amazing dinosaurs and the incredibly diverse ecology of the south coast of England 125 million years ago," said co-author Neil J. Gostling, project leader and paleontologist at the University of Southampton.

The cliffs of Brighton's beaches have yielded a wealth of fossils over the years.

Millions of years ago, the land that forms the Isle of Wight featured a wide flood plain, dense coastal forests and humid weather that attracted a diversity of dinosaurs, fish, sharks and crocodiles.

It turns out spinosaurids found the habitat especially attractive, too.