Steven Spielberg might have set Jurassic Park off the coast of Costa Rica, but a new discovery shows that England’s south coast would have been just as likely a location.
An incredible find by an amateur dinosaur hunter has revealed that East Sussex was once home to a fierce array of deadly carnivores – including a cousin of the T-rex.
Dave Brockhurst, 65, a former quarryman, discovered a set of fossilised teeth from three prehistoric predators within the clay pits of Bexhill-on-Sea.
One of the teeth is 5cm long, serrated like a steak knife and is believed to have belonged to a horse-size relative of the T-Rex which lived 135 million years ago.
This is the first time anyone has found evidence of a member of the Tyrannosaur family from this period anywhere in the UK.
In addition to the tyrannosaur tooth, Mr Brockhurst also found the needle-sharp fang of a 7m-long spinosaurus.
And, rounding out the Jurassic Park cast, the final tooth came from a 1m-long dinosaur called a dromaeosaurid which is in the same family as the Velociraptor.
Dr Neil Gostling, of the University of Southampton, told MailOnline: ‘This huge diversity of predators is really pointing towards there being a vastly more diverse group of dinosaurs roaming around 135 million years ago in Southern England.’
An amateur dinosaur hunter has made a stunning discovery which proves that England’s South Coast was home to a wide variety of predators including a relative of the Tyrannosaurus Rex
Five fossilised teeth (pictured) were found in East Sussex. Tooth ‘A’ belongs to a spinosaur, tooth ‘B’ to a Tyrannosaur, tooth ‘C’ to a relative of the velociraptor, while D and E have yet to be identified
For the last 30 years, Mr Brockhurst has spent his weekends and days off scouring the clay deposits of the Ashdown brickworks where he used to work.
The obsession began in the 1990s after he rolled his ankle at work one day after tripping over a fist-sized fossil which turned out to be a dinosaur’s foot.
Mr Brockhurst says: ‘As a child I was fascinated by dinosaurs and never thought how close they could be.
‘Many years later I started work at Ashdown and began looking for fossils.’
In the years since, Mr Brockhurst has found more than 5,000 fossils ranging from tiny fish scales to massive dinosaur thighbones.
However, his greatest discovery came this year when he unearthed an unusual set of fossilised teeth.
Handing his findings over to the professionals, palaeontologists from the University of Southampton worked out that these imposing fangs belonged to a set of carnivores dating back to the Cretaceous period.
Although the Bexhill carnivores are only represented by their teeth, the researchers were able to work out their identities by using machine learning and computer analysis.
The fossils were discovered in the Ashdown Brickworks in Bexhill-on-Sea, just to the West of Eastbourne
Dave Brockhurst, 65, a former quarryman, has spent the last 30 years looking for fossils in the Ashdown Brickworks but says that finding the predators’ teeth stands out among the 5,000 specimens he has donated to the Bexhill Museum. Pictured: Mr Brockhurst at the site where the teeth were found
Dr Chris Barker, visiting researcher at the University of Southampton and lead author of the research says: ‘Dinosaur teeth are tough fossils and are usually preserved more frequently than bone. For that reason, they’re often crucial when we want to reconstruct the diversity of an ecosystem.
‘Our results suggest the presence of spinosaurs, mid-sized tyrannosaurs and tiny dromaeosaurs – Velociraptor-like theropods – in these deposits.’
Meat-eating dinosaurs, properly called theropods, are extremely rare in the Cretaceous sediments of southern England.
They are so rare in fact that, of the thousands of fossils found by Mr Brockhurst over three decades of work, only 10 specimens had been found.
The discovery of a tyrannosaur tooth is especially exciting for researchers since it is the time a specimen from this group has been identified in sediments of this age and region.
During the Cretaceous period 135 million years ago, England would have been at a much lower latitude than it is now, close to where North Africa is today.
This means that the climate would have been much warmer and suitable for large reptiles such as the dinosaurs.
The region that is now Bexhill-on-Sea was once a vast river delta which deposited the silty sediments that form the area’s clay pits.
This terrifying serrated tooth belonged to a cousin of the Tyrannosaurus Rex which lived 135 million years ago. Experts say that this dinosaur would have been 5m-long, a third as large as its famous cousin. It would have lived on the Cretaceous flood planes of the South coast and hunted for large herbivores
Dr Gostling says that the Bexhill Tyrannosaur would have roamed these expansive flood planes, hunting for large herbivores like members of the iguanadontid family.
The smaller dromaeosaurid meanwhile would have survived by hunting for smaller dinosaurs and even some large lizards that made their home by the river.
What is surprising for the researchers is that this area, where theropods were once thought rare, could have supported such an array of different predators.
To support this population, there must have been plenty of prey to keep the hungry predators fed.
Dr Gostling says: ‘In ecosystems, you have lots and lots of herbivores with a smaller number of predators at the top.
‘If you’ve got a diverse group of predators, you must have an equally diverse group of herbivores because you have these size differences.’
Although the researchers say that more investigation will be needed, this means that Mr Brockhurst’s discovery is a very good sign that the South of England could be far richer in dinosaur life than anyone previously thought.
KILLING OFF THE DINOSAURS: HOW A CITY-SIZED ASTEROID WIPED OUT 75 PER CENT OF ALL ANIMAL AND PLANT SPECIES
Around 66 million years ago non-avian dinosaurs were wiped out and more than half the world’s species were obliterated.
This mass extinction paved the way for the rise of mammals and the appearance of humans.
The Chicxulub asteroid is often cited as a potential cause of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event.
The asteroid slammed into a shallow sea in what is now the Gulf of Mexico.
The collision released a huge dust and soot cloud that triggered global climate change, wiping out 75 per cent of all animal and plant species.
Researchers claim that the soot necessary for such a global catastrophe could only have come from a direct impact on rocks in shallow water around Mexico, which are especially rich in hydrocarbons.
Within 10 hours of the impact, a massive tsunami waved ripped through the Gulf coast, experts believe.
Around 66 million years ago non-avian dinosaurs were wiped out and more than half the world’s species were obliterated. The Chicxulub asteroid is often cited as a potential cause of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event (stock image)
This caused earthquakes and landslides in areas as far as Argentina.
While investigating the event researchers found small particles of rock and other debris that was shot into the air when the asteroid crashed.
Called spherules, these small particles covered the planet with a thick layer of soot.
Experts explain that losing the light from the sun caused a complete collapse in the aquatic system.
This is because the phytoplankton base of almost all aquatic food chains would have been eliminated.
It’s believed that the more than 180 million years of evolution that brought the world to the Cretaceous point was destroyed in less than the lifetime of a Tyrannosaurus rex, which is about 20 to 30 years.
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