Brighstoneus, Lockwood & Martill & Maidment, 2021

Lockwood, Jeremy A. F., Martill, David M. & Maidment, Susannah C. R., 2021, A new hadrosauriform dinosaur from the Wessex Formation, Wealden Group (Early Cretaceous), of the Isle of Wight, southern England, Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 19 (12), pp. 847-888 : 3-4

Brighstoneus gen. nov.

Etymology. Brighstoneus is named after the village of Brighstone on the Isle of Wight, which is close to the excavation site and was home to the Reverend William Fox, a celebrated Victorian fossil collector whose discoveries had a major impact on early dinosaurian research.

Type species. Brighstoneus simmondsi gen. et sp. nov.

Diagnosis. As for type and only species (see below).

Locality and horizon. Wessex Formation, early Barremian, Lower Cretaceous. MIWG 6344 was excavated during 1978, from a plant debris bed (L9 of Stewart 1978) to the west of Grange Chine on the south coast of the Isle of Wight ( Fig. 2 ).

Comment on association. The skeleton was found associated with one of the UK’ s most complete theropods, Neovenator salerii Hutt et al., 1996 (MIWG 6348; Brusatte et al. 2008). Both individuals were contained, with some overlap, in an area of ~ 3 × 6 m. There was no articulated material, but preservation was consistent across individual elements and there was no replication of material or other iguanodontian material found during the excavation. The material was stored at the Museum of the Isle of Wight Geology, who were also involved in the excavation. The then curator is confident that the material was associated (S. Hutt, pers. comm. 2021). Some photographs and drawings of the site are included in Supplementary material (Figs S1–S5) and hard copies of other contemporaneous records have been accessioned under MIWG 6344.

Comment on stratigraphy. The base of the Barremian stage within the Wessex Formation lies west of Sudmoor Point and has been dated to 126.5 Ma ( Gale et al. 2020), while the Barremian–Aptian boundary at the base of Chron M0, on the basis of dates from Svalbard ( Zhang et al. 2019), is given as 121.4 Ma ( Gale et al. 2020). This gives the Barremian a duration of approximately 5.1 Ma compared to earlier estimates of 4.5 Ma based on phosphorus burial rates ( Bodin et al. 2006). The Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis holotype was found following a cliff fall from the Shepherds Chine Member of the Vectis Formation in 1914 ( Hooley 1925) and was probably from earliest Aptian strata, making it approximately 4.0 Ma younger than Brighstoneus simmondsi , assuming uniform depositional rates.

Figures

Figure 2. Generalized stratigraphical log modified from Allen & Wimbledon (1991). Schematic lithological logs of Wealden exposure between Sudmoor and Atherfield on the Isle of Wight showing sites of Brighstoneus simmondsi gen. et sp. nov. (MIWG 6344) and the Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis holotype (NHMUK PV R5764). Adapted from Sweetman (2007). Abbreviations: Mbr, member; SS, sandstone.