Steven Spielberg he could set Jurassic Park on the beach Coaster Rica, but a new discovery suggests that the southern coast of England could also be a place.
A surprise find by an amateur dinosaur hunter has revealed that East Sussex was once home to a host of deadly predators – including a cousin of the T-rex.
Dave Brockhurst, 65, a former stonemason, found teeth made from three ancient enemies in the clay pits of Bexhill-on-Sea.
One of the manolos is 5cm long, curved like a knife and is believed to have belonged to a relative of the T-Rex that lived 135 million years ago.
This is the first time anyone has found evidence of a member of the Tyrannosaur family from this period anywhere in the UK.
In addition to the tyrannosaur tooth, Mr Brockhurst also found a 7m-long spinosaurus needle-sharp bone.
And, rounding out the Jurassic Park cast, the last tooth came from a 1m-long dromaeosaurid dinosaur in the same family as Velociraptor.
Dr Neil Gostling, from the University of Southampton, told MailOnline: ‘This huge diversity of predators really shows that there was a diverse group of dinosaurs that roamed Southern England around 135 million years ago.’
A young dinosaur hunter has made an interesting discovery which proves that the South Coast of England was home to a variety of animals including a relative of the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Five preformed teeth (photographed) were found in East Sussex. Tooth ‘A’ is a spinosaur, tooth ‘B’ is a Tyrannosaur, tooth ‘C’ is a relative of a velociraptor, while D and E are still unknown.
For the past 30 years, Mr Brockhurst has worked weekends and days sweeping the clay of the Ashdown brickyard where he worked.
The obsession began in the 1990s when he sprained his knee at work one day after tripping over a rock that turned out to be a dinosaur foot.
Mr Brockhurst said: ‘When I was a child I was fascinated by dinosaurs and I never thought they would be around.
‘Many years later I started working at Ashdown and started looking for fossils.’
In the years since, Mr Brockhurst has found 5,000 fossils ranging from tiny fish scales to giant dinosaur tusks.
However, his biggest discovery came this year when he unearthed some unusual teeth.
Presenting their findings to experts, palaeontologists from the University of Southampton discovered that these large teeth belonged to a group of carnivores that began in the Cretaceous period.
Although the Bexhill carnivores are represented only by teeth, the researchers were able to find out what they know using machine learning and computer analysis.
The antiques were found at Ashdown Brickworks in Bexhill-on-Sea, west of Eastbourne.
Dave Brockhurst, 65, a former stonemason, has spent 30 years looking for artifacts at Ashdown Brickworks but says the discovery of the beasts’ teeth stands out among the 5,000 specimens he has donated to the Museum of Bexhill. Photo: Mr. Brockhurst at the site where the teeth were found
Dr Chris Barker, visiting researcher at the University of Southampton and lead author of the study, said: ‘Dinosaur teeth are hard bones and are often preserved twice as long as bones. For this reason, it is often necessary when we want to recreate different types of environment.
‘Our results show the presence of spinosaurs, medium-sized tyrannosaurs and small dromaeosaurs – like Velociraptor theropods – in these deposits.’
Carnivorous dinosaurs, known as theropods, are rare in the Cretaceous sediments of southern England.
It is so rare that, of the thousands of artifacts that Mr. Brockhurst found during his thirty years of work, only 10 weapons were found.
The discovery of a tyrannosaur tooth is of great interest to researchers because it is the first specimen of this group to be found in the sediments of this age and region.
During the Cretaceous period 135 million years ago, England would have been at a much lower altitude than it is now, close to where North Africa is today.
This means that the climate would have been much warmer and suitable for large reptiles such as dinosaurs.
The area that is now called Bexhill-on-Sea was once a large river that deposited the waste that formed the local clay pits.
This scary tooth belonged to a cousin of the Tyrannosaurus Rex that lived 135 million years ago. Experts say that this dinosaur would have been 5 meters long, and a third as big as its famous cousin. It would have lived on the Cretaceous flood plains on the south coast and hunted large herbivores
Dr Gostling says the Bexhill Tyrannosaurus would have roamed these large planes, hunting large herbivores like members of the iguanodontid family.
During this time, the small dromaeosaurid would have survived by hunting the small dinosaurs and large lizards that lived along the river banks.
What surprised the researchers was that this area, once thought to be rare, could support a variety of animals.
To support these people, there must have been plenty of animals to feed on.
Dr Gostling says: ‘In nature, you have many herbivores with very few top predators.
‘If you have different predators, you have to have different types of herbivores because you have different sizes.’
Although the researchers say that further research will be needed, this means that Mr. Brockhurst’s findings are a very good sign that the South of England may be much richer in dinosaur life than anyone previously thought.
KILLING THE DINOSAURS: HOW A CITY-LARGE ASTEROID LEFT 75 PERCENT OF ALL ANIMALS AND SPECIES.
About 66 million years ago the non-avian dinosaurs were wiped out and more than half of all species on Earth became extinct.
This mass extinction paved the way for the expansion of mammals and the appearance of humans.
The Chicxulub asteroid is often cited as a possible cause of the Cretaceous-Paleogene end.
The asteroid hit the shallow ocean in what is now the Gulf of Mexico.
The impact produced huge dust and soot clouds that caused global climate change, killing 75 percent of all animal and plant species.
Researchers say the soot necessary for such a global disaster could have come from direct impact on rocks in the shallow waters surrounding Mexico, which are rich in hydrocarbons.
Less than 10 hours after the tsunami hit the Gulf Coast, experts believe.
About 66 million years ago the non-avian dinosaurs were wiped out and more than half of all species on Earth were wiped out. The Chicxulub asteroid is often cited as a possible cause of the Cretaceous-Paleogene event (stock photo)
This caused earthquakes and landslides in places as far away as Argentina.
While examining the scene, researchers found small pieces of rock and other debris that were shot into space when the asteroid crashed.
These tiny particles, called spherules, covered the Earth in thick soot.
Experts say that the loss of sunlight led to the complete loss of water in the water.
This is because the phytoplankton base of almost all marine food chains would have been destroyed.
It is believed that more than 180 million years of evolution that brought the world to the Cretaceous point were destroyed before the life of Tyrannosaurus rex, which is about 20 to 30 years.
