Steven Spielberg may have placed Jurassic Park off the coast of Costa Rica, but a new discovery shows that the south coast of England would have been just as likely a location.
An incredible find by an amateur dinosaur hunter has revealed that East Sussex was once home to a ferocious range of deadly carnivores, including a cousin of the T-rex.
Dave Brockhurst, 65, a former quarryman, discovered a set of fossilized teeth from three prehistoric predators in the clay quarries of Bexhill-on-Sea.
One of the teeth is 5 cm long and serrated like a steak knife. It is believed to have belonged to a horse-sized relative of the T-Rex, which lived 135 million years ago.
This is the first time anyone has found evidence of a member of the Tyrannosaurus family from this period anywhere in Britain.
In addition to the tyrannosaur tooth, Mr Brockhurst also found the needle-sharp canine tooth of a 7-metre-long spinosaurus.
And to round out the Jurassic Park cast, the final tooth came from a 3-foot-long dinosaur called a dromaeosaurid, which is in the same family as Velociraptor.
Dr. Neil Gostling, from the University of Southampton, told MailOnline: ‘This huge diversity of predators really suggests that there was a much more diverse group of dinosaurs roaming southern England around 135 million years ago.’
An amateur dinosaur hunter has made a stunning discovery that proves the south coast of England was home to a wide variety of predators, including a relative of the Tyrannosaurus Rex
Five fossilized teeth (pictured) were found in East Sussex. Tooth ‘A’ belongs to a spinosaur, tooth ‘B’ to a Tyrannosaur, tooth ‘C’ to a relative of the velociraptor, while D and E have yet to be identified
For the past 30 years, Mr Brockhurst has spent his weekends and days off scouring the clay deposits at the Ashdown brickworks where he used to work.
The obsession began in the 1990s after he twisted his ankle at work one day after tripping over a fist-sized fossil that turned out to be the foot of a dinosaur.
Mr Brockhurst said: ‘As a child I was fascinated by dinosaurs and never imagined how close they could be.
‘Many years later I went to work at Ashdown and started looking for fossils.’
In the years since, Mr Brockhurst has found more than 5,000 fossils, ranging from tiny fish scales to enormous dinosaur thigh bones.
His biggest discovery, however, came this year when he unearthed an unusual set of fossilized teeth.
Palaeontologists from the University of Southampton took his findings to the professionals and learned that these imposing canines belonged to a range of carnivores dating back to the Cretaceous period.
Although the Bexhill carnivores are represented only by their teeth, the researchers were able to determine their identity using machine learning and computer analysis.
The fossils were discovered at the Ashdown Brickworks in Bexhill-on-Sea, just west of Eastbourne
Dave Brockhurst, 65, a former quarryman, has been searching for fossils at the Ashdown Brickworks for the past 30 years, but says finding the predators’ teeth stands out among the 5,000 specimens he has donated to Bexhill Museum. Pictured: Mr Brockhurst at the spot where the teeth were found
Dr. Chris Barker, visiting researcher at the University of Southampton and lead author of the study, said: ‘Dinosaur teeth are tough fossils and tend to be preserved more often than bones. For that reason, they are often crucial if we want to reconstruct the diversity of an ecosystem.
‘Our results suggest the presence of spinosaurs, medium-sized tyrannosaurs and small dromaeosaurs – Velociraptor-like theropods – in these deposits.’
Carnivorous dinosaurs, properly called theropods, are extremely rare in the Cretaceous sediments of southern England.
In fact, they are so rare that of the thousands of fossils found by Mr. Brockhurst over thirty years of work, only ten specimens have been found.
The discovery of a tyrannosaur tooth is especially exciting for researchers because this marks the moment when a specimen from this group is identified in sediments of this age and region.
During the Cretaceous period, 135 million years ago, England would have been at a much lower latitude than today, close to where North Africa is today.
This means that the climate would have been much warmer and suitable for large reptiles such as the dinosaurs.
The region now called Bexhill-on-Sea was once a vast river delta that deposited the silty sediments that form the area’s clay pits.
This terrifying serrated tooth belonged to a cousin of the Tyrannosaurus Rex that lived 135 million years ago. Experts say this dinosaur would have been 5 meters long, a third as big as its famous cousin. It is said to have lived on the Cretaceous floodplains on the south coast and hunted large herbivores
Dr. Gostling says the Bexhill Tyrannosaur would have roamed these vast floodplains, hunting large herbivores such as members of the iguanadontid family.
The smaller dromaeosaurid, meanwhile, would have survived by hunting smaller dinosaurs and even some large lizards that made their home near the river.
What is surprising to the researchers is that this area, where theropods were once considered rare, could have harbored such a range of different predators.
To support this population, there must have been enough prey to feed the hungry predators.
Dr. Gostling says: ‘In ecosystems you have a lot of herbivores with a smaller number of predators at the top.
‘If you have a diverse group of predators, you also have to have an equally diverse group of herbivores, because then you have size differences.’
Although the researchers say more research will be needed, it means that Mr Brockhurst’s discovery is a very good sign that southern England could be much richer in dinosaur life than anyone previously thought.