A real Warwickshire dinosaur!
Jurassic Warwickshire was dominated by a shallow sea that was inhabited by a range of amazing sea-creatures. True dinosaurs, though living at this time, were land-dwelling animals. For this reason, dinosaur remains are very rare in Warwickshire.
However, the Warwickshire Museum is now the new home for a unique collection of fossil remains - the bones of a new species of dinosaur.
The story began 170 million years ago when the carcass of a Megalosaurus-like carnivorous dinosaur was washed up on a beach over what is now southern Warwickshire. The bones were covered by layers of shelly sand, which eventually became deeply buried and hardened into limestone layers. Millions of years later, the limestone rock beds were revealed at the land's surface, as the modern landscape slowly emerged. There they remained until the 1960s, when a number of the shattered bones were dug up in a local quarry.
For several decades the rock fragments and the bones that they contain were cared for by Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. They were recently returned ‘home’ to Warwickshire where they have undergone detailed scientific investigation and documentation. When the work is finished, a selection of the bones will go on display at the museum.
The finds are some of the most important dinosaur remains to have been discovered in the United Kingdom in recent years. We now know that they represent a completely new species of dinosaur - a meat-eater that has been named Cruxicheiros newmanorum. 'Cruxicheiros' (pronounced Croos-i-ky-ros) means 'Cross Hand' in Latin and Greek and is named after the disused quarry site where the bones were discovered. 'newmanorum' refers to the Newman family, on whose land the bones were found.
Email: museum@warwickshire.gov.uk
Geology collection homepage
Cruxicheiros on Wikipedia
