Beach on Wight Island
Paleontologist was walking on the famous Wight Island when he found a trace of an ancient (very) herbivore.
Os iguanodontes, or “iguana tooth”, they were a type of herbivorous ornithopod-dinosaurs that lived during the beginning of the Cretaceous period (110 million to 140 million years ago).
Big and bulky herbivore, weighed 5,000 kg and measuring about 3 meters and 10 meters in length.
They inhabited essentially in the current areas of Belgium and United Kingdom – and Island of Wight, Known as “Dinosaur Island”, it is south of Southampton, on the southern coast of England. That is, the United Kingdom.
During the Cretaceous period, the sea level was lower in place. Wight Island was a flooded green plain. You buried traces, submerged, were resistant along millennia.
Nowadays, if there is storm, The island cliffs are very affected, corroded, facilitating the investigation of their rich paleontological history.
It was precisely in this place, in a praia, that a few days ago a huge footprint of an iguanodon.
Joe Thompson, paleontologist, took advantage of a post-tempostal period to walk the beach looking for traces of dinosaurs.
Until, when I was already tired and disappointed because I thought I would find nothing, it saw a strange purple print that looked like the finger of a prehistoric footprint.
After all there are three fingers, but only three fingers have about 1 meter long each.
“It’s probably The best footprint I’ve ever found“, Confessed Joe Thompson Na, who estimates that the footprint has about 130 million years.
This trace has a particularity: it was purple. Color has possibly changed due to clay on that beach. The purple tone of the footprint will be related to the oxidation of minerals.
And it is necessary to take advantage: because it is a clay footprint, and for now being more exposed to nature, probably the footprint will disappear in a few months.
