New species of dinosaur named after Museum scientist Paul Barrett

For hundreds of years the bones of dinosaurs have been dug up on the Isle of Wight.

The small island off the coast of southern England is one of the best places in Europe to find the remains of these ancient animals, having revealed everything from huge plant-eating sauropods and massive predatory spinosaurs, to small deer-like herbivores and tiny raptors.

But the remains of armoured dinosaurs have been fairly modest, with only one species called Polacanthus having been found to date.

Now, a newly described ankylosaur is adding to the diversity of dinosaurs which would have once called the Isle of Wight home. Called Vectipelta barretti, it has been named in honour of Museum dinosaur expert Professor Paul Barrett, who is one of the world’s leading experts on dinosaurs. 

The new species has been published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.

'This is the first ankylosaur from the Isle of Wight for about 142 years, which is when the last one was officially described,' explains Stu Pond, a Scientific Associate at the Museum who led the study on the new dinosaur. 'It has been quite exciting.'

'The specimen was excavated in the early 90s and was eventually accessioned to the Dinosaur Isle Museum, which is where we started working on it.'

Ankylosaurs were large plant-eaters with short legs and wide, flat bodies. Related to animals such as Stegosaurus, they were covered with large bony armour plates and spikes, which likely helped to defend them from hungry predators.

Paul is a world-renowned palaeontologist, who has been working at the Museum for two decades. An expert in herbivorous dinosaurs, over the course of 220 scientific papers his research has ranged from the origin of dinosaurs to how these animals diversified right up until their extinction 66 million years ago, in addition to naming several new species himself. 

'I'm flattered and absolutely delighted to have been recognised in this way,' says Paul. 'Not least as the first paper I ever wrote was also on an armoured dinosaur in the Museum collections.'

'I'm sure that any physical resemblance is purely accidental.'

Dinosaur isle

The new ankylosaur dates back to the Early Cretaceous, around 125 million years ago.

At this point in time, Europe was not a single landmass but would have been a series of islands scattered across a sub-topical sea. One of these islands would have incorporated southern England and the Isle of Wight. The climate would have been similar to that of the Mediterranean today, with the island clad in humid forests of conifers and ferns.

Living in these forests would have been a diverse range of animals from the smallest insect to the biggest dinosaur. The waterways were home to frogs, fish, turtles and crocodiles, while small lizards and mammals would have scurried along the banks. Pterosaurs would have been flitting around the canopy, as large predatory theropod dinosaurs stalked their prey between the trunks below.

But what has made the Isle of Wight particularly good for fossil hunting is more to do with the environment itself at this time.  

'The Isle of Wight was actually part of a flood plain with a meandering river system going across it,' explains Stu. 'Away to the north, around about where Cornwall is, was a range of mountains which fed all this.'

'The flood plain was subject to occasional wildfires and also quite large, catastrophic flood events.'

This meant that periodically huge volumes of water surged through the landscape, sweeping masses of vegetation and any animals unlucky enough into short-lived pools that formed in low lying areas. These debris beds of organic matter were then covered in sediment and sealed off for over 140 million years.  

It is from one of these ancient time capsules that the remains of Vectipelta were unearthed.

Small, slow-moving and spikey

While this is not the first ankylosaur known from the Isle of Wight, it is distinct enough that the researchers are confident it is a new species.   

Dr Susie Maidment, a dinosaur researcher at the Museum and expert on armoured dinosaurs and their evolution, was senior author on the description of this new species. This was done on the basis of a range of different characteristics.

'It is actually really distinct from Polacanthus,' explains Susie. 'It has features on its neck and back vertebrae that differ, while it also has more blade-like and recurved spikes which we don't see in the Polacanthus material that we have.'

'And when we put Vectipelta into a big evolutionary analysis to work out the relationship of all these different dinosaurs, we find that Polacanthus and Vectipelta are not actually very closely related. They are really quite far apart in terms of ankylosaur evolution, so it is really very clear that this is a different species.'

Curiously, rather than this new species coming out as being more closely related to other armoured dinosaurs in the UK, the analysis showed it was more similar to ankylosaurs found thousands of kilometres away in China. This could suggest that during the Early Cretaceous there were animals moving between what is now Europe and Asia, but Susie is far more cautious about this interpretation. It is more likely that as better data emerges from China these relationships will shift.

What is clear though, is the huge impact that Paul has had on the study of dinosaurs. Throughout his career he has not only published hundreds of papers within the field, including some that shifted the very foundations of palaeontology, but he has also mentored and supervised over 30 PhD students. 

'Paul is incredibly influential in our discipline,' says Susie. 'He is incredibly high profile and has contributed an enormous amount to the field. But he's also had an absolutely enormous influence on all of our careers, and we wanted to thank him for that.'

'So we decided to name a small, slow-moving, spikey organism after him.'