England: Dinosaur footprints discovered on the shoreline of the Isle of Wight

Good news for all the fans of Jurassic Park. Enthusiasts of Jurassic Park may get an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of ancient giants. This is likely to become possible in the near future, as a collection of remarkably preserved dinosaur footprints has been discovered on a beach located off the southern coast of England.

If reports are to go by, a team of engineers from the Environment Agency, a government organization, was examining ways to fortify the coastal defenses at Yaverland seafront on the Isle of Wight when they stumbled upon these fossils.
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Referring to this, Nick Gray, who is the regional flood and coastal-risk manager for the agency added that dinosaurs existing right where our team is working bridges the past and present, intertwining the contemporary challenges of addressing climate change with an era that we can only envision.
He further noted that we all have encountered such tales and watched the films, but this discovery merely offers us a glimpse into what life was like.
Experts speculate that the 125 million-year-old footprints might belong to a Mantellisaurus, a herbivorous dinosaur that measured 7m in length and had distinctive three-toed prints. Mantellisaurus thrived during the early Cretaceous period, which concluded approximately 66 million years ago.

The Environment Agency reported that the fossils were unearthed in a popular tourist spot, adjacent to a beachfront café, however, for experts, the revelation of such findings is not unexpected.

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Martin Munt, the curator at the local Dinosaur Isle Museum, referred to the Isle of Wight as the richest dinosaur location in Europe. Munt further noted that the island has yielded 35 different types of dinosaurs. While the specific dinosaur species responsible for the footprints cannot be definitively determined, it is highly probable that a Mantellisaurus was present on the Isle of Wight, not only in other parts of the southern coast, where they were presumed to be more common.
The Environment Agency mentioned that the Natural History Museum in London has on display a Mantellisaurus skeleton that was discovered on the Isle of Wight in 1917. It is considered one of the most comprehensive dinosaur skeletons in the United Kingdom.