Iguanodon Foot Prints From The Isle Of Wight.

[DE&i]

Elliot and I went to look at some Dinosaur footprints (not foot casts) on the Isle of Wight where there is a section of track way in a red clay bed; 150 metres out from the cliff at Hanover Point, heading in a south-easterly direction, but are only accessible at a low tide.

These are usually attributed to a theropod, but when we went to the the Dinosaur Isle museum they refered to them as iguanodontid.

Would anyone know where they might have been heading also interestingly we could see some more tracks in a few layers below which appear to be from another Iguanodon heading in the opposite direction.

What sort of time scale would we be looking at between the two sets of prints?

1. Three foot prints heading south-east on a top layer of red clay.

2. The approximate direction they were heading (yellow arrow).

[DE&i]

3. Two foot prints heading in the opposite direction (black arrows) different layers indicated by the yellow arrows (red arrow) indicates about where the three foot prints on the top layer are.

Regards,

D&E.

[Auspex]

Had I been able to do something like this at Elliot's age, I'd have been walking without touching the ground for a week!

(Could still happen today!!!).

[Terry Dactyll]

Darren....thanks for sharing these and as footprints go these are very obvious attributed to a dinosaur...You see many less detailed...

Timescale between sets of footprints... I would of thought be dependant on the speed of deposition of the sediments to form the layers that the footprints were made in...sometimes during monsoon type climatic events sediment run off could be quite rapid or adjacent to slow moving tidal waterways very slow... I suppose the answer lies in looking closely at the geology...

[Kosmoceras]

Thanks for posting these, I never got to see any in-situ like this on my visit.

[DE&i]

Darren....thanks for sharing these and as footprints go these are very obvious attributed to a dinosaur...You see many less detailed...

Timescale between sets of footprints... I would of thought be dependant on the speed of deposition of the sediments to form the layers that the footprints were made in...sometimes during monsoon type climatic events sediment run off could be quite rapid or adjacent to slow moving tidal waterways very slow... I suppose the answer lies in looking closely at the geology...

Hi Steve,

Im still looking into your suggestion and really enjoying the research , i have another theory of mine ive been looking into.

I’ve been reading about how at the beginning of the Cretaceous period when Eurasia and North America formed one large land mass called Laurasia. And where what is now Southern England laid a large lagoon and this was connected via a narrow inlet with a sea occupying part of what is now the North Sea. The lagoon was surrounded by low-lying land across which numerous, sluggish rivers flowed.

I can see The Isle Of Wight area was crossed by one of these rivers indicated by the red arrow which flowed north-eastwards from a source somewhere in what is now the western end of the English Channel. The climate was evidently subtropical judging from the plant remains which are found with the dinosaurs. There also appear to have been pronounced wet and dry seasons rather like modern Mediterranean. For much of the time the area was a large swamp, partly covered with water during the wet seasons but drying out during the dry seasons.

Do you think due to the conditions I’ve just described and this apparent river cutting through the Isle of Wight, many Iguanodons might have perished on a migratory route in this river especially due to the amount of Iguanodon bone found there today?

I’m trying to picture a scenario where the Wildebeest of today succumb to similar conditions.

Regards,

Darren.

[Regg Cato]

Hi Steve,

Im still looking into your suggestion and really enjoying the research , i have another theory of mine ive been looking into.

I’ve been reading about how at the beginning of the Cretaceous period when Eurasia and North America formed one large land mass called Laurasia. And where what is now Southern England laid a large lagoon and this was connected via a narrow inlet with a sea occupying part of what is now the North Sea. The lagoon was surrounded by low-lying land across which numerous, sluggish rivers flowed.

Geography of Southern England in Wealden Time.jpg

I can see The Isle Of Wight area was crossed by one of these rivers indicated by the red arrow which flowed north-eastwards from a source somewhere in what is now the western end of the English Channel. The climate was evidently subtropical judging from the plant remains which are found with the dinosaurs. There also appear to have been pronounced wet and dry seasons rather like modern Mediterranean. For much of the time the area was a large swamp, partly covered with water during the wet seasons but drying out during the dry seasons.

Do you think due to the conditions I’ve just described and this apparent river cutting through the Isle of Wight, many Iguanodons might have perished on a migratory route in this river especially due to the amount of Iguanodon bone found there today?

I’m trying to picture a scenario where the Wildebeest of today succumb to similar conditions.

Regards,

Darren.

Interesting idea, definitely possible

I think it might be a little difficult to pinpoint exactly where specific track-makers were headed (for all we know, one animal might have just turned around), but determining what trends in migratory patterns might have existed in EC iguanodonts is an interesting project.

[jpc]

I don't think a herd of them died there. The only two wildebeest comparisons in dinos I know of are form sites with a heckuva lot more bone than the Isle of Wight. I don't think there is an actual bone bed on the IOW. I think the IOW's dinos died much more randomly.

[DE&i]

Thank you very much for that information; it is now my understanding that the majority of bones have been recovered from the plant debris beds. Or less commonly from the sandstones, in other words those deposits which are thought to represent flooding.
I know that most of the material consists of single bones, often broken up and scattered by rising floodwaters before being swept, along with plant debris into the river channels where burial occurred.

Regards,

Darren.