The Isle of Wight is a diamond shaped island
nestled in the Solent just off the southern coast of England.
This little jewel is home to a cornucopia of natural world surprises and wonders.
Great parts of the island contain areas of outstanding natural beauty
where the red squirrel is native and abundant, and flora and fauna are plentiful.
In fact, the whole region is so rich in diversity
that it's been designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.
Tourism and farming play a major part of the island's economy.
And you can see why as you traverse through the rich bucolic countryside,
its patchwork of multicoloured diversely, cropped fields blend seamlessly
with the stark white chalky cliffs and soft golden beaches.
Much of the island's success lies in its location and geology,
its location, because it's a short ferry journey from the British mainland,
which is ideal for tourism.
With its milder and warm temperatures that attract holidaymakers to the island's
seaside towns and tourism related activities.
This is a trend that was started 1845 when Queen Victoria
bought a house and estate on the island, and frequently visited.
It's also known for its incredible geology within such a small area.
It's a diverse area biologically and geologically.
So for example, here we're talking about fossils and rocks.
We have a geological record here spanning around 130 million years
from the early Cretaceous right down through into the Pleistocene.
And some of our sections, particularly some of our Paleogene rocks,
have some the best exposures of rock of this age in Europe.
The Isle of Wight is one of these places
that is just packed with fossil remains and amazing diversity.
And there's not many places well, in Europe, really,
where you can find dinosaur remains to the extent you do down here.
And an amazing diversity of fossils
in such a small compact coastline.
In its 67 miles of coastline
we have over 1000 different species of fossils that you can find around the island.
The isle of Wight is world renowned
as one of the best places in Europe to go hunting for dinosaurs.
Its rich fossil beds and history mean that the island has played a critical role
in the history of paleontology and the study of fossils.
One of the really good things about the Isle of Wight
is because it's got so many cliffs.
The cliffs are continuously being eroded by the sea.
And this means that the dinosaur fossils
erode out over time and the rate of cliff erosion is really high.
So new dinosaur specimens are being discovered all the time.
And this has been going on obviously for a very, very long time.
And we have some of the best preserved, most complete
dinosaur skeletons ever found in the UK from here in the Isle of Wight.
In the last 200 years, over 20 different species of dinosaurs have been found here.
Some of these have been found nowhere else in the world.
The Victorian scientists
who first unearthed remains of these giant dinosaurs, plants, mammals
and reptiles attempted to make sense of these extraordinary animals.
So there were a lot of famous palaeontologists who worked on material
from the Isle of Wight,
and there are few that were very, very active here themselves.
One of the early ones was actually a vicar on the Isle of Wight, William Fox,
who was responsible for finding many of the early significant discoveries.
And these found their ways
into the hands of people like Sir Richard Owen and Thomas Henry Huxley in London.
So, they were worked by some of the really great and good of palaeontology.
It was in 1841, whilst studying the island's fossils
of giant reptiles that Sir Richard Owen noticed a number of similarities
and he created the word Dinosauria, meaning terrible lizards.
The large number of early dinosaur discoveries that came from the island
had a major influence in shaping early ideas about dinosaur
evolution and biology.
Because these fossils were found at an early point in dinosaur studies.
They became a reference for understanding, almost like a blueprint
for many of the dinosaurs that were found later.
Many of the bigger family groups of dinosaurs are named
after some of these early discoveries from the Isle of Wight.
Just because they are old doesn't mean that these discoveries aren't relevant today.
In fact, these dinosaurs, are some of the most important
because they're the holotypes.
And that means that they're the ones that hold the name.
That means whenever we find a new dinosaur that we think might be closely related,
we have to go back and look at these ones to determine
whether we've got a new species or whether it's the same thing.
So they're just as relevant today as they were 120 years ago.
I think there's still lots of potential for new dinosaurs from the Isle of Wight.
At least three new dinosaurs have been named just in the last couple of years.
I know of other undescribed specimens already in museums
both on the Isle of Wight and in London that are likely to get new names too.
Increasing the roster of animals from here even further.
The most common dinosaurs that we find here on the Isle of Wight are Iguanodontian dinosaurs.
These are two and four legged herbivores.
So plant eating dinosaurs
they are quite slender, they probably could move quite fast.
They're well known by Iguanodon, which had its famous thumb spike,
but there's actually quite a diversity of these different dinosaurs on the island.
So, there's a very rich fauna of dinosaurs from the Isle of Wight,
containing many of the groups that we'd be familiar with.
So, for example, we have armoured dinosaurs,
the tank- like things like Polacanthus.
This we have a variety of two and four legged plant eating dinosaurs
called Omithopods, like Iguanodon and its relatives.
We have a few examples of the gigantic plant-eating sauropod
dinosaurs that big long necked animals, relatives of animals like Diplodocus.
We also have a lot of meat-eating dinosaurs ranging from quite small animals
all the way through to gigantic predators like Neovenator and Eotyrannus
With so much here to discover.
It would be only natural for you
to want to have a go at looking for a discovery of your own.
So how can you get involved?
So the Isle of Wight is really good simply
because it's one of the places in the UK you might actually find a dinosaur.
You stand a very high chance
if you're walking along the beach of just spotting a bit of bone
lying in the shingle or maybe sticking out the edge of a cliff.
But I would say if you do see bones coming out of the cliff, please don't take them out.
The cliffs are very unstable, you might find yourself in quite a dangerous situation.
And also, those bones actually belong to whoever owns the land atop the cliff.
But there is a really strong chance that you might find dinosaurs here.
There's also an excellent museum on the island
that displays a lot of the key finds that you can go and see right here.
Dinosaur Isle is the Isle of Wight Council's Geological Museum.
Although a modern building, the collection was started over 200 years ago.
So what the collection is, is a geological collection.
It's not just dinosaurs, it's the fossils, it's the rocks.
It's the minerals from the Isle of Wight.
Now, specifically, it is the Isle of Wight.
So we are collecting fossils and rock samples
from between about 130 and about 30 million years ago.
Also the local Pleistocene as well.
So the museum tells the geological story of the Isle of Wight,
but also of the great emphasis
on the dinosaurs, because that's what people seem to like.
Indeed, many holidaymakers head straight for the dinosaur themed attractions,
little realising they can also have fossil related adventures of their own.
The Isle of Wight is a lovely place to visit,
even if you have no interest in dinosaurs or fossils.
The climate is beautiful.
The beaches are beautiful, the cliffs beautiful.
The environment is lovely.
So it's a really, really nice place to visit.
It's a nice place to spend a day on the beach.
But if you happen to look over while you're on the beach
and pick up a dinosaur vertebra, then even better.
So it's a great place to come and visit.
It's a great place to come fossil collecting.
And on the majority of beaches around the island.
You don't need tools, you don't need hammers, you don't need chisels.
You can just walk along.
And the fossils are just simply on the beach.
You can just pick them up as well.
So it's really exciting
if you spend the week almost guaranteed to leave with some really cool fossils.
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