Archaeologists have discovered dinosaur remains in Wales

For years, paleontologists believed that dinosaurs inhabited the Earth, except for present-day Wales. Instead, this part of the UK is known as the country of dragons, and the fictional red dragon is even a symbol of pride on the Welsh flag. However, a new study has found that one of these creatures may have actually existed in this region.
A major fossil discovery in Wales has revealed the existence of Welsh dinosaurs that once inhabited a tropical lowland by the sea 200 million years ago. Dinosaur footprints have been found in Bari and other nearby areas, indicating that these dinosaurs roamed the warm lowlands. The new findings, published in the Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, spur other reports over the past decade that have examined both the presence and diversity of dinosaur species in this part of the prehistoric world.
One of the largest finds is at Lavernock Point, near Cardiff and Penarth. The rocks in these areas contain dark-colored shales and limestones—evidence of ancient shallow seas. The area also contained large amounts of bones. Some of them are from fish, sharks and marine reptiles. However, several of them were confirmed to be dinosaur bones.
"The bone bed paints a picture of a tropical archipelago that was subject to frequent storms that washed material from the surrounding area, both on land and sea, into the intertidal zone," said lead author Owen Evans, a former MSc in palaeobiology at the University of Bristol. university.
"This means that from just one fossil horizon we can reconstruct a complex ecological system with a diverse array of marine reptiles such as ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and placodonts in the water and dinosaurs on land," Evans added.
During fieldwork at Lavernock, the research team discovered two important items: fossilized remains of a placodont osteoderm and a coelacanth pharyngeal bone. According to Chris Duffin, head of the research project, these remains are generally rare in the UK. The discoveries paint a new picture of what type of dinosaurs roamed Britain and what they may have looked like.
"The volume of dinosaur remains found at Lavernock is extremely exciting and provides an opportunity to study a complex and often enigmatic period of their evolutionary history," said Michael Benton, Professor at Bristol's School of Earth Sciences and another leader of the project.
"We identified the remains of a large plateosaurus-like animal, along with several bones that probably belonged to a carnivorous theropod," Benton said.
The research paper also covers a significant amount of new information from the microfossils found at the site. These include fish teeth, scales and bone fragments of thousands of different species. A discovery of this magnitude will help identify the main species that lived in these shallow seas long ago. | BGNES