Paleontologists have uncovered one of the best-preserved dinosaurs ever found in the United Kingdom on the Isle of Wight. In a recent study, the team presented Comptonatus chasei as a new species of iguanodontian that roamed Earth around 125 million years ago in the Early Cretaceous.
The research team described it as one of the most complete fossil dinosaurs discovered in the U.K. in the last century; the last incredibly well-preserved specimen was also a species of iguanodon. It’s the latest in a number of remarkable dinosaur discoveries from the island.
“A lot of dinosaur fossils really are quite fragmentary,” says Jeremy Lockwood, a scientific associate at the Natural History Museum, who led the examination of the newly described species. “Sometimes a new species is erected on as little as a single jaw, but with Comptonatus chasei, we've got nearly every bone in its body.”
