Major fossil discovery finally exposes the origins of Welsh dragons

A major fossil discovery has helped shed light on the history of dinosaurs in Wales. The finding is reported in Proceedings of the Society of Geologists.

Until recently, the land of the dragon had no dinosaurs. However, in the last 10 years some dinosaurs have been reported, but their living conditions were not well known.

In a new study by a team from the University of Bristol, important details have been revealed for the first time. Researchers have discovered that early Welsh dinosaurs, from more than 200 million years ago, lived in a tropical lowland near the sea. Dinosaur tracks are known from Barry and other nearby sites, indicating that dinosaurs roamed the warm foothills.

The discovery was made at Lavernock Point, near Cardiff and Penarth, where dark-coloured clay and limestone cliffs document ancient shallow seas. At some levels, there are accumulations of bones, including the remains of fish, sharks, marine reptiles and occasionally, dinosaurs.

Former Bristol MSc Palaeobiology student Owain Evans, who led the study, explained, “The bone bed paints the picture of a tropical archipelago which was subject to frequent storms, which washed material from all over the surrounding area, both on land and on land. out at sea, in a tidal zone.

“This means that from just one fossil horizon, we can reconstruct a complex ecological system, with a diverse group of marine reptiles such as ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and placodonts in the water, and dinosaurs on land.

“I had visited the coast at Penarth all my life, growing up in Cardiff, but I had never noticed the fossils. Then, the more I read, the more amazing it became. Local geologists had been collecting bones since the 1870s, and most of them are in the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff”.

Cindy Howells, Curator of Palaeontology at the National Museum of Wales, adds, “The collections from Lavernock go back to the 19th century, with many sections of the bone bed collected over the years. The presence of dinosaur fossils at the site ensures that it remains one of the most significant sites for palaeontology in Wales.”

Two discoveries made by the team while conducting fieldwork at Lavernock were the fossilized remains of a placodont osteoderm and a single coelacanth gular bone.

Supervisor Dr. Chris Duffin said: “Remains of coelacanths and placodonts are relatively rare in the UK, which makes these finds all the more remarkable. These two fossils alone help build a wider picture of what the Rhaetian would have looked like in UK “.

Professor Michael Benton from the Bristol School of Earth Sciences, another project supervisor, added: “The volume of dinosaur remains found at Lavernock is extremely exciting and is a chance to study a complex and often mysterious period in their history evolutionary. We have identified the remains of a large Plateosaurus-like animal, along with some bones that likely belonged to a predatory theropod.”

A significant part of the paper is devoted to the abundant microfossils found at the site, which include fish teeth, scales and bone fragments. By examining thousands of specimens, the team was able to identify the main species in the shallow seas and determine the relative importance of each.

The origin of the Welsh dragons was finally fixed.