For thousands of years, humans have stumbled across fossils of strange bones and teeth that belonged to no known living animals, leading to legends of monsters and dragons. But it was in the UK where the first dinosaur was finally recognised and officially named.
In the early 1800s, Oxford scholar William Buckland became fascinated by a number of giant fossil bones that had been sent to the university by workers at the nearby Stonesfield quarry. The huge femur, vertebrae and jawbone full of teeth were so strange he called in naturalist Mary Morland and French anatomist George Cuvier to help. Between them, they deduced it was a 12m-long predatory reptile. But it was geologist James Parkinson who named it Megalosaurus, meaning ‘great lizard’. Buckland wrote up his discovery in 1824, though the word dinosaur would only be used later.
In the intervening 200 years there have been hundreds more dinosaur discoveries in the UK and, in 2025, Oxfordshire has again hit the paleontological headlines. At Dewars Farm Quarry near Bicester, workers found anomalies in the stone layers and experts were called in. The subsequent dig uncovered a number of tracks of fossilised dinosaur footprints up to 150m long, including one set by our friend Megalosaurus (now known to walk upright on two legs, very like T-Rex but only 9m long, not 12m as Buckland thought). The tracks had been laid down in what was once soft mud and offer scientists unique insight into how the animals moved and interacted.
The UK's 'dinosaur capital'
However, the Isle of Wight is the undisputed dinosaur capital of the UK, particularly the 11-mile stretch of coastline between Compton and Sandown. In 2024, the most complete dinosaur discovery for over a century was found here. Named Comptonatus chasei, it was a plant-eating species from the Iguanodon family, known for its large size. In 2021, four completely new dinosaur species were found and a year later Europe’s largest carnivorous dinosaur was unearthed, a frankly terrifying 10m long Spinosaur with a face like a crocodile.
But why is the Isle of Wight such a hotbed of dinosaur remains? Some 125 million years ago, the area was a food-rich region of lagoons and floodplains attractive to many species of dinosaurs. With shifting tides and rising sea levels, sediments were frequently laid down, preserving the remains of animals quickly. And not just dinosaurs; marine reptiles, pterosaurs and other prehistoric animals are frequently found here.
And the largest dinosaur ever discovered in the UK? It’s a toss-up between Cetiosauriscus (found in Cambridgeshire in the 1890s) and Cetiosaurus (the most complete skeleton, found in Oxfordshire in the 1860s and 70s). Both were long-tailed and long-necked herbivores reaching 16–18m long and at least twice the weight of a male African elephant.
Discover more prehistoric stories
- 50,000 years ago, on an island in the Pacific Ocean, there lived real-life hobbits – wait, what?
- “A remarkable find": student unearths prehistoric animal on Jurassic Coast
- Deadly prehistoric dogs that roamed the Earth millions of years ago: Are these the most ferocious canine hunters of all time?
- Scientists examined 6 gigantic Bronze Age rubbish heaps across England. What they found is epic
Top image: Compton Bay in the Isle of Wight. Credit: Getty
