Mr. Lee's dermal plates: the first Polacanthus?

The illustration from Lee's report of 1843 of a single osteoderm and surrounding ossicles.

The first sign that there was an armoured dinosaur present in the rocks of Wealden Sub-Basin of the Isle of Wight was when one John Edward Lee reported the existence of three fossils from the Hastings Beds of Sandown on the Isle of Wight way back in 1843. However, the Hastings Beds don’t outcrop on the island, so if they didn’t actually come from there where did they come from? Lee describes these fossils as ‘dermal plates’, and goes on to describe them at length in his paper. Only one is illustrated however, and this and the second plate were sent to Mr. Sowerby (presumably this is James De Calre Sowerby, a mineralogist and illustrator who co-founded the Royal Botanical Society and Gardens) in a hackney carriage along with drawings of the fossils destined for publication in the Annal of Natural History. The third was in poor condition and not deemed worthy of illustration and is still held in the Natural History Museum, London (BMNH R643) according to Pereda-Suberbiola. The surviving illustration clearly shows a single large osteoderm surrounded by smaller ossicles, themselves set amongst more ossicles. This certainly looks like a section of Polacanthus sacral shield, but is it?

The holotype of Polacanthus was found by the remarkable Rev. Fox of Brixton (now Brighstone) on the Isle of Wight around 1865. Fox had found the shield intact but it crumbled as he excavated the specimen, and when J.W. Hulke finally got around to describing the fossil in 1881 the shield was still in numerous small bits. Five years passed and Hulke revisited Fox’s Polacanthus, the shield of which had been reconstructed piece-by-piece by the remarkable efforts of a Mr. Hall and Mr. Barlow. This revealed the ornamented upper surface of the shield which Hulke describes in some detail, including the arrangement of larger keeled osteoderms amongst smaller ossicles, very similar to Lee’s specimen. Polacanthus is not the only nodosaurid (if Polacanthus is actually a nodosaurid, but that’s another story) with a sacral shield, and a comparison via the literature with sister taxa such as Mymroopelta and Gastiona reveal their sacral shields were similarly ornamented (see illustration below).

A selection of osteoderms and ossicle arrangements from various nodosaurids.
Lee's specimen is top right, the others are redrawn from various papers.

It’s likely that Lee’s specimens were the first remains of a Polacanthus sacral shield ever reported. As was mentioned earlier, the fossils probably didn’t come from the Hastings Beds as they aren’t present on the Isle of Wight; Pereda-Suberbiola suggests these remains are from the Wessex Formation at Brook Bay (Pereda-Suberbiola, 1994), although a part of the Wessex Formation is exposed in the cliff at Sandown and he doesn’t give his reasons for favouring this location. As for the fossils themselves, Lee was an astute observer and commented on the histology of the osteoderms, recognising the fibrous nature of the bones. He compared them with the scales of extant iguanas and crocodilians, and despite the fragmentary nature of the material found no reason to connect them with lizards or crocodiles.

The two ‘plates’ and drawings never made it to Sowerby. They were sent in a hackney carriage but never arrived and so joined the list of other dinosaur specimens lost to science. Had they had done, it’s entirely plausible that Polacanthus would have been named twenty years before it actually was.

References:

Hulke, J.W. 1881. Polacanthus foxii, a large undescribed dinosaur from the Wealden Formation in the Isle of Wight. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 172; 653-662.

Hulke, J. W. 1887. Supplemental note on Polacanthus foxii, describing the dorsal shield and some parts of the endoskeleton, imperfectly known in 1881. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 178: 169-72.

Lee, J.E. 1843. Notice of Saurian Dermal Plates from the Wealden of the Isle of Wight. Annals of Natural History. London. 11: 5-7.

Pereda-Suberbiola, X. 1994. Polacanthus (Ornithischia: Ankylosauria), a transatlantic armoured dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Europe and North America. Palaeontographica, Abteilung A, 232: 133–159.

Celebrating Dinosaur Isle: Jehol-Wealden International Conference. 2013

Last week saw the first ever ‘Celebrating Dinosaur Isle: Jehol-Wealden International Conference’ at the National Oceanography Centre (NOCs), Southampton, UK and hosted by the University of Southampton Ocean and Earth Sciences and the Confucius Institute. There were around 90 delegates for the talks and 40 for the field trip, including palaeontologists from all over the UK, Europe, China and the USA. As a venue NOCs is hard to beat as the building sits on the dock front and from the cafe are excellent views down Southampton Water, across the Solent to the Isle of Wight in the distance and has superb facilities. A room was dedicated to displays and vendors and next door was the lecture theatre, with lunch and refreshments served on the wide landing right outside the two, the proximity of which was useful as it maximised the time spent with other delegates. 

The exhibit room at the conference.

As the title suggests, the whole meeting concentrated on the Early Cretaceous of the Jehol of China and the Wealden of Europe.  The day kicked off with an introduction by conference organiser Gareth Dyke of the University of Southampton, followed by a brief welcome by Mark Cranshaw of the Confucius Institute. The first talk was John Radley on the Geological Conservation Review and featured the work of Percival Allen on the Wealden climate, work that is still relevant today. In an entertaining talk Hugh Torrens than discussed the ‘first dinosaur’ as recognised by Richard Owen and discovered on the Isle of Wight. In the next room was the specimen itself, kindly lent by the National History Museum, and naturally it attracted a lot of attention. Jeff Liston then talked about the legalities of fossil collecting in China, where there are strict rules about moving fossils across even provincial boundaries. Pascal Godefroit was unable to attend but Mark Witton finished the first session with a typically excellent talk on Jurassic pterosaurs and their importance in understanding the evolution of Early Cretaceous forms.

After coffee Paul Barrett delivered a comprehensive and well-illustrated review of dinosaurs from the Jehol Biota. He was followed by Darren Naish who has been working on the Eotyrannus monograph and whose description of the specimen was very thorough, providing lots of information along with great images of the fossil. Dave Martill discussed the dentition of the pterosaurs Istiodactylus and Longchengpterus, again with excellent hi-res photos of the specimens which looked spectacular on NOCs’ excellent projector system. Unfortunately M. Matsukawa was also unable to attend the meeting but Martin Lockley delivered his talk in his place, no easy task considering the complexity of recreating ancient food webs and trophic cascades.

Lunch gave everyone a chance to really study the exhibits in the room next door to the lecture theatre. Apart from the thrill of seeing the ‘first dinosaur’ there were parts of a Polacanthus on display, with a very impressive ilium and sections of the sacral shield, as well as various vertebrae and parts of the pectoral girdle and limbs. A team from Dinosaur Isle had various specimens on show, including a complete Iguanodon mandible and some large Baryonyx teeth. The model of Microraptor featured in Dyle et al’s Nature paper was present along its balsa wood counterpart, more on that later. The chaps from Lyme Regis had fetched over a selection of fossils for sale and The Bristol Dinosaur Project also had a display on their local dinosaur, Thecodontosaurus antiquus.

The first of the afternoon sessions started with Zihui Zhang from Beijing discussing an enantiornithine bird skull and its implication for other enantiornithines. A small enantiornithine was also the subject of Dongyu Hu’s (Shenyang) talk, and he was followed by Colin Palmer who gave an excellent talk on the work that went into the Microraptor paper mentioned earlier. Colin’s talk finished with video of the balsa model  of Microraptor being flown, and demonstrating the flightpath predicted by computer simulations was pretty accurate. Next up was Mike Howgate, who was expounding his view that Microraptor was in fact a ‘archaeopterygid’ bird and Eoraptor was a possible bird ancestor. Mark Young then talked about the “Shanklin Shocker”, a large metriorhynchid with teeth similar to may extant fish species such as piraña in that when the jaw is closed they give a shearing motion, very effective for tearing lumps of flesh off prey. The images of the damage a cookie-cutter shark can do to a human leg could put a person off paddling for life.

The final session started with my own review of dinosaur ichnology on the Isle of Wight, and this was followed by Martin Lockley (who needs no introduction to vertebrate ichnologists) who showed some of the work being done in China at the moment, including some of the quite astonishing museums being built to house collections and cover track sites, including one shaped like a huge tridactyl print. Steve Sweetmen then talked about his fascinating work on Wealden microvertebrate assemblages, and also showed a spectacular print from Cowlease Chine, in-situ in the cliff, made in mudstone and infilled with sandstone. Pam Gill closed the session with a comprehensive review of Wealden-Jehol mammals.

The evening was spent in the Red Lion in Southampton, a 12^th century pub where delegates were entertained by Luke Muscutt and friends. Luke is a PhD student at the university and a brilliant musician. Needless to say, a good time was had by all and much discussion was had, including an impromptu ichthyosaur mini-conference in the back room.

Walking through the upper Wessex and Vectis formations, first stop on the field trip.

Next morning the field trip started out from the Red Jet terminal in Southampton and were soon heading across the Solent to East Cowes on the Isle of Wight, where everyone boarded a bus and headed to Sandown, home of Dinosaur Isle. The first stop was the beach at Yaverland, where under the guidance of expert Trevor Price delegates inspected the uppermost section of the Wessex Fm and the whole of the Vectis Fm, both of which are exposed in this small but very productive stretch of coast. The beach conditions meant the footprint layers were covered by sand, but everyone could search for fossils in the shingle and along the cliffs. Next up the trip visited the Wessex-Vectis junction and then spent some time examining the section, including the footprint-bearing beds of the Shepherd’s Chine Member, eventually making its way towards to Lower Greensand and its beautifully preserved shelly fossils. I’m pleased to say dinosaur bone was found!

Heading towards Hanover Point.

After an introduction by Jeremy Lockwood a superb lunch was had at Dinosaur Isle, where the lab was open and local collectors were present with their finds and palaeontologist Steve Hutt was present to discuss the collection. This included new Iguanodon material from Nick Chase (who donates to the museum), a piece of thyreophoran armour and some quite incredible Baryonyx material representing at least two animals; let us hope these important specimens not lost to science.

The multicoloured sands of Alum Bay. My Nan had a small glass tube of these on her
sideboard, but this was the first time I'd seen them first hand.

Next on the itinerary was a visit to Hanover Point and Brook Bay on the west coast of the island, led by Steve Hutt, Penny Newbery and Trevor Price. There delegates inspected the dinosaur footcasts that litter the beach on this part of the coast and which were particularly abundant given the time year (I’m pleased to say) and spent time prospecting in the shingle for fossils. More bone was found. Following pickup by the bus, everyone was taken to the Needles Park where many brave souls rode the chair lift to the beach to look at the famous Alum coloured sands, and upon re-ascent were treated to a fine buffet and drinks. We took the Red Jet back to Southampton around 9.15pm and the conference ended.

The chairlift down to the beach at Alum Bay. Gulp.

This meeting was a resounding success. The talks were all fascinating (I’m excluding mine here, others can be the judge of that), the venue and organisation spot on, as was the field trip. It was great to see so many Early Cretaceous workers in one space, and personally I’m hoping a lot will come out of the discussions had during the coffee breaks, in the pub and on the field trip. Having so many experts on the field trip was a real treat, and I personally learnt much for their generous and patient instruction despite having spent many years visiting some of these sites. Thanks are due to Gareth Dyke for organising the conference and Jessica Lawrence who assisted, as well as Dinosaur Isle and The Needles Park for their hospitality.

I am sure I join many others in hoping this conference will be repeated in years to come.

Jehol-Wealden Conference schedule

The schedule for the upcoming Celebrating Dinosaur Isle: Jehol-Wealden Conference at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton is now available, and is posted below (get a pdf version here). The conference consists of a full programme of international speakers on the 20th September and a very busy field trip (including two site visits) to the Isle of Wight on the 21st September. This will be an essential meeting for anyone working on or interested in Early Cretaceous research, and will provide a great networking opportunity. Booking via the conference web page at the University of Southampton web site.

Celebrating Dinosaur Island in September 2013

The University of Southampton has announced it will be hosting a meeting called Celebrating Dinosaur Isle: A Jehol-Wealden International Conference on 20th and 21st September 2013 at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. UK and Chinese palaeontologists will present their research, and the meeting will be an excellent opportunity to forge new contacts and discuss future research. There will also be an opportunity to visit some of the main fossil sites on the Isle of Wight, which is a hop over the Solent from Southampton.

More programme information as it comes through, in the meantime here is the poster.

In the interests of full disclosure I have to state I am a research associate with the University of Southampton and also designed the poster. The image on the poster is a reconstruction of the skull of Neovenator salerii, a theropod dinosaur unique to the Isle of Wight.

Palaeontology panoramas - the bigger picture

One of the best things about field work is the places visit that demonstrate the wonderful geological diversity of our planet. Each location is like an open book ready to offer up apparently infinite amounts of information to those curious enough to look closer and ask questions.

Here are three panoramas I've assembled of places I particularly enjoyed visiting and working in. These images are made up of a sequence of photographs which I've stitched together using Adobe Photoshop, which has a rather nifty filter to do just this. I have adjusted the levels a little but otherwise the images are untweaked. Click on them to see larger versions.

First up is a panorama taken in July 2010 in the badlands of Montana. This 180 degree image shows the Hell Creek in the early morning, with clover on the gumbo banks (due to an exceptionally wet spring that year) and Sagebrush scenting the air. All that, and the rocks are full of fossils. Bliss!

Hot, remote and full of small, vicious bitey things but also full of luverly fossils: The Hell Creek Formation in Montana.
A wonderful spot.

Next is a panorama of Barnes High on the south-west coast of the Isle of Wight. This image shows rocks of the Wealden, mainly the red, green and grey clays of the Wessex Formation with the Vectis Formation appearing at the very top on the right of the image and thickening towards the left, over the orange-coloured sandstone which forms the cap of Barnes High; this is the junction of the Wessex and Vectis formations. The famous Hypsilophodon Bed lies just beneath this sandstone and reaches the beach further to the south. It was at this location that a partial large sauropod skeleton was found and the BBC returned to many years later with Live on Dinosaur Island to try and find any remaining bones missed, a task at which they unfortunately failed, although they cornered the market in pond mussels for the duration of the dig.

Here be dragons: Barnes High on the Isle of Wight, England as seen from the beach.
The top looks relatively flat in this image but it's actually a bit steeper in real life.

Next comes a vista of part of The Valley of Fire in Nevada. We were here on a tour from Las Vegas after the SVP meeting, and although we didn't find any body fossils we did find a trackway and indulge in some neoichology. This an area of spectacular scenery and wonderful geology and if you're in the area is well worth a visit. The landscapes within the park are quite diverse and never less than breathtaking. Yes, that is a wedding in progress near the car park. We came in that big pink jeep. Hmmm.

The Valley of Fire, Nevada. An astonishing place and only a couple of hours trip from Sin City.

Baryonyx rough sketch

Here's a rough sketch for an illustration I'm working on of the Wealden theropod Baryonyx walkeri. B. walkeri is known from the Upper Weald Clay of Sussex and from isolated bones and teeth on the Isle of Wight, and as the type specimen was found with Lepidotes scales in the stomach region (Martill and Naish, 2001) there are reasonable grounds to speculate that it was in part at least, a piscivore.

This reconstruction is based on information from the excellent book Dinosaurs of the Isle of Wight although I've made alterations to the back which reflects findings by Hutt and Newbery (2004) which describe a large theropod vertebra with a tall neural spine which they assigned to B. walkeri, and indicated that Baryonyx had a low dorsal sail similar to Suchomimus tenerensis, which Hutt and other workers considered a junior synonym of Baryonyx.

The fascinating vertebra mentioned in Hutt and Newbery's paper now resides in Dinosaur Farm Museum on the Military Road, on the Isle of Wight. This museum has some really excellent specimens but last time I was there suffered from uninformative labelling and a general lack of consistency in the way the fossils were presented, and the whole impression was rather slapdash. Hopefully it's improved and is still worth a visit.

Martill, D. M. and Naish, D. (eds). 2001. Dinosaurs of the Isle of Wight. The Palaeontological Association, 9, 252pp.

Hutt, S. and Newbery, P. 2004. An Exceptional Theropod Vertebra from the Wessex Formation (Lower Cretaceous) Isle of Wight, England. Proc Isle of Wight nat. Hist. Archaeol Soc. 20, 61-76.

Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis

Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis

My wife and I have been regular visitors to the Isle of Wight for many years now and one of the most common dinosaur fossils found on the island are indeterminate ornithopod remains. Most of the fossils found eroding out of the Wealden strata on the southwest coast of the island and at Yaverland are fragmentary and isolated skeletal elements and are often identified as ornithopod, but assigning these to species or even particular genus can be difficult.

The Isle of Wight as photographed from a passing airplane by the author.

Lying off the south coast of England the island is a palaeontologists heaven with virtually all coastal exposures being fossiliferous. A chalk ridge divides the island east-west (you can the cliffs below Tennyson Down on the left and Culver Cliff on the right); exposures north of the ridge are primarily Cenozoic in age and south of the ridge they are Mesozoic, although river gravels in the southwest of the island are Quarternary in age, lie unconformably on the Wealden strata and produce bones of large mammals such as mammoth and occasional hearths of hunter-gatherers).

Almost certainly we will have somewhere in our collection a piece of Mantellisaurus altherfieldensis. Formerly attributed to Iguanodon atherfieldensis the gracile M. atherfieldensis is one of the commoner dinosaurs found on the island. In fact, the bones of iguanodonts are so common the local collectors call them 'pigs'; Dinosaur Isle in Sandown has an excellent wall-mounted specimen of Iguanodon bernissartensis (a large and more robust animal) and last time I was there the museum was preparing to display Nick Chase's iguanodont (I'm unsure of the species).

This makes it a natural choice for a sketch and I've chosen to show M. atherfieldensis as a biped, as suggested by Paul (2007).

References:

Paul, G.S. A revised taxonomy of the iguanodont dinosaur genera and species, Cretaceous Research (2007), doi: 10.1016/j.cretres.2007.04.009