Foot of Flesh-Eating Dinosaur Found on UK Beach

The missing clawed foot of a 200-million-year-old cousin of T. rex was recently found on a beach in Wales, according to multiple media reports.

Paleontologists believe the foot belongs to a new dino, dubbed “Welsh Dragon,” which is the oldest Jurassic dinosaur ever found in the U.K. Based on the foot and other previously excavated remains, the dino was about 20 inches tall when it died, so it’s also one of the smallest.

The student who discovered the foot, Sam Davies of the University of Portsmouth, told Wales Online, “It was pure luck that I found it.”

The discovery occurred on a beach at Lavernock, Vale of Glamorgan, in Wales.

“It was my first day of doing field work for my third year project, and I was just wandering up and down the beach looking for fossils,” Davies said. “It was just sitting on top of a piece of rock. It was obvious the fossil was fingers or toes, because there were three in a row, but the first thing that came to mind was that it was some sort of plesiosaur.”

Paleontologist David Martill of the University of Portsmouth confirmed that it was not part of a plesiosaur, but instead was the long-lost foot of Welsh Dragon, a dinosaur that was partially recovered last year by brothers Robert and Nick Hanigan.

Like Davies, the brothers were fossil hunting at the very same beach when they found some fossilized bones.

Explaining why they were at this particular beach, Nick said that about 3 years ago he “found an ichthyosaur skull and my brother Robert was looking for the rest of the ichthyosaur.”

Robert continued the story from there: “I was looking for fossils out at the low tide mark, and I was just on my way back to the car. I thought I’d have a look around here in a recent rock fall that had happened. While looking through the rocks, I just noticed a few small bits of what I thought were bone, so I picked up some blocks and took them back to the car.”

Suspecting the bones were important, the brothers brought the fossils to paleontologists for evaluation. The remains were identified as belonging to a carnivorous dinosaur that was an early cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex. Welsh Dragon lived some 130 million years before T. rex emerged. The fossils are now at National Museum Cardiff.

According to the museum, the new dinosaur hunted small mammals, lizards and other reptiles. Crocodiles thrived in its ecosystem.

Welsh Dragon walked on two legs and had a long tail. It was a warm-blooded animal, and much of its body was probably covered in feathery down with quills along its back.

Read more at Discovery News