New Ankylosaur Species Found In UK's 'Dinosaur Island'. All About The Armoured Creature

The species is an ankylosaur, a kind of armoured dinosaur. An analysis by the researchers showed Vectipelta was found to be most closely related to some Chinese ankylosaurs.

The Isle of Wight in the English Channel, a popular tourist destination, is also known as the dinosaur island. A number of dinosaur species roamed here millions of years ago, and many of these have been identified over the years.

Now, a new armoured dinosaur has been described in a study published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. Named Vectipelta barrette (after Prof Paul Barrett of the UK’s Natural History Museum), it is the first new armoured dinosaur to be discovered in the Isle of Wight in the last 142 years.

The species is an ankylosaur, a kind of armoured dinosaur. Other ankylosaur remains have been found on the island over the years, but all these finds in the last 142 years were described as Polacanthus foxii, a famous dinosaur from the island.

“Now all of those finds need to be revisited because we've described this new species,” a statement from the Natural History Museum quoted lead author Stuart Pond as saying. He described the find as an important specimen “because it sheds light on ankylosaur diversity within the Wessex formation and Early Cretaceous England”.

Vectipelta barrette and Polacanthus foxii differ in several ways. Their neck and back vertebrae are different, and the former’s armour is more blade-like and spiked.

An analysis by the researchers showed Vectipelta was found to be most closely related to some Chinese ankylosaurs. This suggested that dinosaurs moved freely from Asia to Europe in that period, the researchers said.

The statement explained why the new species was named after Prof Barrett. It quoted senior author Dr Susannah Maidment as saying: ‘Myself and some of the other authors on this study have been mentored or supervised by Paul for most of our careers, and it was notable to us that Paul hadn’t had a dinosaur named after him yet. He's hugely influential in vertebrate palaeontology, and he's a world-leading authority on dinosaurs. We really wanted to thank him for his support and mentorship, so we decided to name a slow-moving, spikey organism after him.”

Prof Barrett was quoted as saying: ‘I'm flattered and absolutely delighted to have been recognised in this way, not least as the first paper I ever wrote was also on an armoured dinosaur in the NHM collections. I'm sure that any physical resemblance is purely accidental.”