Re: Dino hunts net rare raptor teeth - BBC

["Simon M. Clabby" <dinowight@yahoo.co.uk>]

All I have to add to that is

http://www.geocities.com/dinowight/otherdino.html#raptor

Simon M. Clabby
DinoWight - The Dinosaurs of the Isle of Wight

 --- Garrison Hilliard <garrison@efn.org> wrote: >
Dino hunts net rare raptor teeth 
> 
> Seven fossil dinosaur teeth unearthed on the Isle of
> Wight belong to raptors -
> the predatory dinosaurs made famous by the film
> Jurassic Park. 
> The teeth represent only the second example of
> velociraptorines in the UK and
> suggest the animals from which they came were
> surprisingly large. 
> 
> "It would have been a fairly fearsome beast, I
> think," said Steven Sweetman of
> the University of Portsmouth. 
> 
> The finds are described in an upcoming issue of
> Cretaceous Research. 
> 
> They date to the Early Cretaceous Period about 125
> million years ago. 
> 
> The velociraptorines were slender, opportunistic
> predators that are believed to
> have hunted in packs. They possessed a
> characteristic sickle-like toe claw which
> was used for slicing open and disembowelling prey. 
> 
> They term velociraptorine refers to a group of
> dinosaurs that resemble the
> deadly velociraptors, depicted in Steven Spielberg's
> 1993 film Jurassic Park. 
> 
> Mr Sweetman, a postgraduate student at Portsmouth
> University, found the first
> tooth in 1972. Since then he has collected three
> more. A further three teeth
> came from a private collector. 
> 
> They come from fossil beds in the south-west of the
> island and belong to the
> Wessex Formation which is in turn a sub-division of
> a much larger formation
> known as the Wealden. 
> 
> Raptor rapture 
> 
> Six of the specimens are the property of the Isle of
> Wight's Dinosaur Isle
> museum in Sandown. 
> 
> "They were always predicted to have been in the
> fauna but have never been found
> before," he said. 
> 
> Based on the size of the teeth, Mr Sweetman believes
> the beast would have been
> similar in size to Utahraptor, a dromaeosaur which
> grew up to 6.5m in length and
> about 2m tall. 
> 
> 
> In Early Cretaceous times, the location where the
> teeth were found was a
> low-lying river floodplain bounded by a valley. The
> teeth were found in plant
> debris beds, the result of charred vegetation and
> animal matter from a wildfire
> being transported by a rainstorm. 
> But the teeth show signs of being shed, which
> suggests they were either lost
> naturally or while feeding. 
> 
> Mr Sweetman said he hoped further digging might
> unearth bones from the
> dinosaurs. But, he said, "the Wealden only tends to
> produce scrappy things
> rather than skeletons". 
> 
> The only other velociraptorine found in the UK so
> far is the species Nuthetes
> destructor , from the Purbeck limestone beds in
> Dorset. 
> 
> 
> Story from BBC NEWS:
>
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/3659783.stm
> 
> Published: 2004/04/26 14:51:18 GMT
> 
> © BBC MMIV
>  

=====
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    DinoWight- the Dinosaurs of the Isle of Wight
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