FINE THEROPOD DINOSAUR FOOTPRINT. ...

Description

FINE THEROPOD DINOSAUR FOOTPRINT
Species unknown
Lower Cretaceous
Brightstone Bay, Isle of Wight, United Kingdom
The Isle of Wight off the south coast of England is home to a fine variety of fossils ranging from the early Cretaceous all the way up to the modern day (that is to say, the Pleistocene Epoch that ended a mere 12,000 years ago). The south coast of the island is lined with beautiful tall sheer cliffs of white chalk and limestone, rich in both marine fossils and rare dinosaur material, and just occasionally dinosaur tracks will be exposed along the shoreline. Worn out as three-dimensional casts from when marine sands filled the footprints the dinosaurs left in the mud, these tracks provide an insight into the life of the early Cretaceous 120 million years ago. This is an excellent specimen of a theropod dinosaur footprint, "theropoda" meaning "beast feet" and most likely belonged to a creature 8 to 10 feet tall. It is amazingly well-preserved and defined as a three-dimensional cast in shell-rich white limestone; that it had been sitting on the shoreline for quite some time is evidenced by attractively mottled colonies of modern coral bryozoans. The three toes are well defined and most likely belonged to a carnivorous dinosaur like a raptor, and the track itself measures 9 inches long by 8½ inches wide.

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