Teeth of tyrannosaur relative found Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex
Research led by the University of Southampton has found several groups of carnivorous dinosaurs, known as therapods, stalked the Bexhill-on-Sea region in East Sussex 135 million years ago. The study was in Papers in Palaeontology.
It discovered an entire community of predatory dinosaurs belonging to different dinosaur groups, including tyrannosaurs, spinosaurs, and relatives of the velociraptor, known as dromaeosaurs. It is the first time ever that tyrannosaurs have been found in sediments of this age and region.
“Meat-eating dinosaurs — properly called theropods — are rare in the Cretaceous sediments of southern England,” said Dr Chris Barker, visiting researcher at the University of Southampton and lead author of the research. “Usually, Isle of Wight dinosaurs attract most of our attention. Much less is known about the older Cretaceous specimens recovered from sites on the mainland.”
The dinosaurs in Bexhill-on-Sea are represented only by their teeth.
Therapod teeth can be complicated, varying in size, shape, and in the anatomy of their serrated edges. The team from the University of Southampton used a number of techniques to analyse the fossils, including phylogenetic, discriminant and machine learning methods, teaming up with the London Natural History Museum, the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, and the Museo Miguel Lillo De Ciencias Naturales in Argentina.
“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,” says Dr Barker. “Rigorous methods exist that can help identify teeth with high accuracy. Our results suggest the presence of spinosaurs, mid-sized tyrannosaurs and tiny dromaeosaurs — Velociraptor-like theropods — in these deposits.”
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