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Behold the coiled beauty of this snake-like galaxy 80 million light-years from Earth

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A spiral galaxy is curled up like a sleeping serpent in a striking new image from the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).

ALMA’s high altitude of 16,500 feet (5,000 meters) and extremely dry climate in Chile’s Atacama Desert provide an excellent vantage point for the observatory’s 66 radio telescopes to penetrate the heavens.

Swirling silently 80 million light-years from Earth like a sleeping, coiled snake, NGC 1087 is an intermediate spiral galaxy that spans 86,800 light-years in the constellation Cetus. This area of the sky is named after a sea monster from Greek mythology and is home to other water-themed constellations, like Aquarius and Pisces.

Related: Serpens galaxy slithers through new Hubble photo

Seen as a composite image composed of shots taken at different wavelengths, ALMA’s observations capture the galaxy’s lava-like reddish hue, which represents cold clouds of star-spawning molecular gas.

The blue-tinted regions indicate areas of older, more mature stars, all imaged by the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, located at the expansive ALMA observatory site, ESO representatives said in a statement (opens in new tab). 

These breathtaking shots were obtained in conjunction with a project called PHANGS, or the Physics at High Angular Resolution in Nearby Galaxies Survey. Scientists assigned to the team are attempting to deliver a catalog of high-resolution observations aimed at nearby galaxies, with telescopes targeting a wide range of wavelengths. 

Analysis of the different wavelengths will reveal data on the galaxy’s internal physical properties of stars, gas and dust, ESO representatives said in the statement. Comparing those results across multiple readings lets astronomers investigate the processes that activate, enhance or restrict the dawn of baby stars. 

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NASA’s plan to get Ingenuity through the Martian winter

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Enlarge / In this concept illustration provided by NASA, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter stands on the Red Planet’s surface as NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover rolls away.

NASA

Ingenuity, NASA’s autonomous Mars helicopter, was only meant to complete five flights. But since its history-making first flight in April 2021, the helicopter has flown 28 times, and preparation is underway for the 29th. Depending on dust levels and the schedule of the rover Perseverance, that flight could take place as soon as later this week. But now Ingenuity faces a new challenge: It’s unclear if the helicopter will survive the coming Martian winter, which begins in July.

Since a Martian year amounts to roughly two years on Earth, and the helicopter is in the northern hemisphere, this is Ingenuity’s first winter. As the solstice approaches, days are getting shorter and nights longer, and dust storms could become more frequent. That all means less sunlight for the solar panels mounted above the helicopter’s twin 4-foot rotor blades. Dust on solar panels recently spelled the end of operations for NASA’s InSight Mars lander, and the effects of cold on electronics is believed to have played a role in the end of the Opportunity and Spirit Mars rover missions.

“We believe it’s survivable,” Dave Lavery, NASA’s program executive for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, told WIRED, but “every extra day is a gift.” JPL Ingenuity team lead Teddy Tzanetos recently wrote in a NASA blog post that “each sol (Martian day) could be Ingenuity’s last.”

Last month, Ingenuity briefly lost contact with Earth due to a decline in battery life, the majority of which is dedicated to heating. NASA reestablished contact with Ingenuity after two days, but due to battery levels falling below 70 percent and persistently lower temperatures, Ingenuity will suspend use of onboard heaters at night to preserve power throughout the four-month winter. Heaters typically kick in when the temperature falls below -5° Fahrenheit, a figure reduced to -40 after the battery power shortage and communications outage last month. Outdoor temperatures during the Martian winter can drop to -112° at night, increasing the likelihood of damage to electronics inside the helicopter.

On Monday, NASA announced the failure of a sensor, delaying flight 29 and requiring NASA to uplink a software patch and rely on another sensor to govern Ingenuity’s navigation algorithms.

Dust storms are an X factor. A study published in May from a team at the University of Houston examined data from NASA sensors over the span of four Martian years, and found that imbalances in solar energy and warm weather in the south increase the likelihood of massive dust storms that can blanket the entire planet. Spring and summer are known as storm seasons, but the likelihood of severe storms reduces as the north approaches the winter solstice, says University of Houston associate professor Liming Li. But there’s a caveat: The study is global and does not take into account any particular region. Conditions can also be different in craters than on the rest of the surface, and the helicopter is operating in the Jezero Crater.

“It’s tough to say,” Li said when asked whether more dust storms are on the way. “It’s hard to give a clear picture for the radiation budget in the Jezero Crater before we really measure it.”

As Ingenuity halts normal flight activity, the team will focus on transferring data like flight performance logs and high-definition images from the last eight flights and making software upgrades. Based on a climate model, NASA expects solar energy levels to rebound to a level that allows the resumption of normal activity this fall. By September or October, if Ingenuity is able to regain the ability to heat its systems at night, it could resume regular flight operations, scouting potential places for the Perseverance rover to stash a collection of rock and soil samples and explore what scientists believe used to be a river delta within the Jezero Crater.

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Europe’s Largest Predatory Dinosaur Unearthed on the Isle of Wight

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Illustration of White Rock spinosaurid by Anthony Hutchings. Credit: UoS/A Hutchings

Despite a land area of just 148 square miles (384 km2), the Isle of Wight, an island off England, is one of the richest dinosaur localities in Europe. In fact, over 20 species of dinosaur have been found there from the early

Research led by paleontologists at the University of Southampton has identified the remains of one of Europe’s largest ever land-based hunters: a dinosaur that measured over 10m long and lived around 125 million years ago.

Several prehistoric bones, uncovered on the Isle of Wight, on the south coast of England, and housed at Dinosaur Isle Museum in Sandown, belonged to a type of two-legged, crocodile-faced predatory dinosaur known as spinosaurids. Dubbed the ‘White Rock spinosaurid’ – after the geological layer in which it was found – it was a predator of impressive proportions.

“This was a huge animal, exceeding 10 m in length and probably several tonnes in weight. Judging from some of the dimensions, it appears to represent one of the largest predatory dinosaur ever found in Europe – maybe even the biggest yet known,” said PhD student Chris Barker, who led the study. “It’s a shame it’s only known from a small amount of material, but these are enough to show it was an immense creature.”

Position of best-preserved spinosaurid bones. Credit: Chris Barker/Dan Folkes

The discovery follows previous work on spinosaurids by the University of Southampton team, which published a study on the discovery of two new species in 2021.

The bones of the ‘White Rock spinosaurid’, which include huge pelvic and tail vertebrae, amongst other pieces, were discovered near Compton Chine, on the southwest coast of the Isle of Wight. The Cretaceous rocks are famous for their dinosaurs, but little appreciated is the fact that the Island’s fossil record preserves dinosaurs from more than one section of history – and some of those sections, even today, are poorly known.

“Unusually, this specimen eroded out of the Vectis Formation, which is notoriously poor in dinosaur fossils,” said corresponding author Dr. Neil Gostling, who teaches evolution and palaeobiology at the University of Southampton. “It’s likely to be the youngest spinosaur material yet known from the UK.”

Close up of the anterior tail (left) and dorsal vertebrae (right). Credit: Chris Barker

The 125 million-year-old Vectis Formation preserves the beginning of a period of rising sea levels, where the ‘White Rock spinosaurid’ stalked lagoonal waters and sandflats in search of food.

“Because it’s only known from fragments at the moment, we haven’t given it a formal scientific name,” said co-author Darren Naish. He added: “We hope that additional remains will turn up in time.

“This new animal bolsters our previous argument – published last year – that spinosaurid dinosaurs originated and diversified in western Europe before becoming more widespread.”

Marks on the bone also showed how, even after death, the body of this giant probably supported a range of scavengers and decomposers.

“Most of these amazing fossils were found by Nick Chase, one of Britain’s most skilled dinosaur hunters, who sadly died just before the Covid epidemic,” said co-author Jeremy Lockwood, a PhD student at the

Reference: “A European giant: a large spinosaurid (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the Vectis Formation (Wealden Group, Early Cretaceous), UK” by Chris T. Barker​, Jeremy A.F. Lockwood, Darren Naish, Sophie Brown, Amy Hart, Ethan Tulloch and Neil J. Gostling, 9 June 2022, PeerJ.
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.13543



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New time crystal experiment may open new horizons in quantum computing

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In a new experiment, an international team of scientists has managed to link two time crystals, which may be useful in quantum computing.

A time crystal, first proposed by physicist Frank Wilczek in 2012, is a phase of matter which repeats in time, similar to how a regular crystal’s structure repeats in space. What that means is that the particles in the crystal perpetually switch between two states without requiring the input of more energy and without losing any energy.

These crystals are the first objects to break what is known as “time-translation symmetry,” a rule in physics that says that a stable object will remain unchanged throughout time. Time crystals violate this rule, being both stable and ever-changing.

So, for example, ice when stable will remain ice and will only change when temperature or another factor makes it unstable. A time crystal changes even when in its ground state, however, acting differently than all other phases of matter.

The scientists from Lancaster University, Royal Holloway London, Landau Institute and Aalto University in Helsinki published their work in Nature Communications earlier this month.

A handout picture from October 2019 shows Sundar Pichai and Daniel Sank (R) with one of Google’s Quantum Computers in the Santa Barbara lab, California, US (credit: GOOGLE/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS)

“Everybody knows that perpetual motion machines are impossible,” Dr. Samuli Autti, lead author of the study from Lancaster University’s Department of Physics, said in a press statement. “However, in quantum physics, perpetual motion is okay as long as we keep our eyes closed. By sneaking through this crack we can make time crystals.”

“In quantum physics perpetual motion is okay as long as we keep our eyes closed. By sneaking through this crack we can make time crystals.”

Dr. Samuli Autti of Lancaster University’s Department of Physics

In order to make the time crystal system, the researchers brought a helium-3 superfluid (a state of matter which acts as a fluid but flows without friction) to one-thousandth of a degree above absolute zero (-273.15°C), according to an article on Aalto University’s website.

The researchers then created two-time crystals within the superfluid. They were able to survive for a few minutes, which is a very long time for the quantum phenomenon. Within the fluid, the crystals formed a two-level quantum system, in which two independent quantum states were able to occupy both states simultaneously.

“The time-crystals we created are different from each other in the sense that one changes its frequency in time, whereas the other doesn’t,” explained Aalto researcher Jere Mäkinen. “During the experiment, we were able to make their frequencies intersect. When their frequencies are about the same, they interact and a part of each one’s amplitude moves over to the other crystal.

“In our second experiment, the crystal that remained regular was ‘empty’ at the beginning, i.e., its amplitude was zero,” Mäkinen said. “When the frequency of the other crystal crossed with the empty one, a part of the amplitude moved to it precisely in the way that the theory describing two-level quantum systems predicted.”

These two-level quantum systems could be used like a qubit, the quantum computer equivalent to the bit used in standard computing. While a bit has a value of either a one or zero, a qubit can have both at the same time, leading to faster computing.

What’s next?

While this time crystal system required an extremely cold superfluid to exist, other studies have shown that time crystals can exist at room temperatures, meaning that there may be a way to make this system work at such temperatures as well. This could lead to quantum computing devices that can operate in room temperature environments.

In March, researchers from the University of California, Riverside, used light to allow time crystals to survive in room temperature conditions.

The UC Riverside time crystal is made out of a one-millimeter wide, disk-shaped magnesium fluoride glass resonator. When the disk is bombarded with two laser beams, the researchers observed subharmonic spikes (frequency tones between the two beams) which indicate the breaking of temporal symmetry and the creation of time crystals.

The scientists picked a particular resonator design and precisely controlled the laser beams to cause light waves to be created with a single crest, instead of like ripples like most forms of light, according to Scientific American. Such waves are called solitons, and scientists were able to create them with a predictable periodicity – on beat, creating a time crystal.

Speaking to Scientific American, lead author Hossein Taheri stated that one observing the resonator would see periodic variations in the outgoing light’s intensity until, at some point, a light intensity pattern would spontaneously emerge with a very different periodicity set by the solitons. This would show that the system was in a way “setting its own time,” thus creating a time crystal.

The system created by UC Riverside is unique because its random losses of energy, as well as the encroaching noise (similar to static), actually increased its stability. The system also requires relatively few parts to make.



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A Hitchhiking Rock Has Traveled With The Perseverance Rover For More Than 120 Days

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Roaming Mars is a lonely existence for NASA’s Perseverance, but the exploratory rover now has a traveling companion: a hitchhiking “pet rock” that got stuck in one of its wheels.

 

Luckily, the Martian stone won’t impact the rover’s science mission and is only a minor inconvenience  – like having a pebble stuck in your shoe. 

Perseverance’s front-left wheel accidentally picked up the pet rock on Feb. 4, or Sol 341 – the 341st Martian day of the Martian year, according to a statement by NASA.

The rock has periodically photobombed images taken by the rover’s front-left Hazard Avoidance Camera (Hazcam).

Recent images show that the rock is still tumbling along with Perseverance 126 days (123 sols) after it first hitched a ride. (A sol, or Martian day, is just 37 minutes longer than an Earth day.)

The rock has been hitchhiking with Perseverance for just over a quarter of the rover’s mission on the Red Planet. When the rock first made a home for itself in Perseverance’s wheel, the rover was exploring the Máaz formation – a section of the Jezero crater that researchers suspect is made from ancient lava flows.

The rock on 19 April, near the Kodiak delta remnant. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Since then, the rover has traveled 5.3 miles (8.5 kilometers) through the Octavia E. Butler landing site, where Perseverance first touched down on Mars in February 2021, and past the remains of the Kodiak delta, which once linked an ancient river and lake.

The rover will shortly be gearing up for an ascent of one of the Jezero crater’s steep slopes, which may dislodge its stony stowaway.

 

Related: Perseverance Rover spotted from space in striking new satellite image 

When the pet rock does eventually fall out of the rover’s wheel, it will likely be surrounded by rocks that are very different from itself because it is likely of volcanic origin.

“We might confuse a future Mars geologist who finds it out of place,” one mission scientist joked in a recent meeting, according to the statement.

Perseverance, or Percy, has picked up several other small rocks in its front-right wheel during its mission, but these have all fallen out within a few days or weeks.

This makes the newest pebbly passenger a Martian hitchhiking record-breaker, according to the statement.

But Percy is not the only Mars rover to pick up a pet rock.

In December 2004, operators of NASA’s Spirit rover – which roamed Mars between January 2004 and March 2010 – had to perform a sharp turn maneuver to shake out a “potato-sized” rock from its right-rear wheel because scientists feared it would cause significant damage, according to NASA.

Previously, picking up unwanted rocks in other parts of the rover has been a much more serious problem for Perseverance.

On Dec. 29, a bunch of small pebbles fell into part of the rover’s machinery, causing Percy to shut itself down for almost a week. Mission scientists eventually worked out a way to remove the pebbles after forcing the rover to detach its drilling arm to properly photograph the affected area.

Related content:

The ‘doorway’ seen on Mars is not for aliens. Here’s how it really formed.

Mars’ death-spiraling moon captured in gorgeous eclipse video

Scientists discover bizarre ‘worm-like’ aurora stretching halfway across Mars 

This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.

 

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Ghostly black hole may have been discovered by UC Berkeley researchers

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A UC Berkeley research team led by graduate student Casey Lam and astronomy associate professor Jessica Lu may have discovered the first “free-floating” black hole, Science Daily reported. 

According to the outlet, they estimate that this invisible object, OB110462, is between 1.6 and 4.4 times the mass of the sun and 2,280 to 6,260 light years away. For now, researchers say that it could also be a neutron star, a “city-size” star which is born when massive, stars collapse and die. Regardless of whether it’s a black hole or a neutron star though, Science Daily reports that the mysterious object is the first “stellar ‘ghost’” discovered floating through space without an accompanying star.  

“This is the first free-floating black hole or neutron star discovered with gravitational microlensing,” Lu told the outlet. Lu has been hunting for free-floating black holes since 2008, and has been observing OB110462 since 2020. “With microlensing, we’re able to probe these lonely, compact objects and weigh them. I think we have opened a new window onto these dark objects, which can’t be seen any other way.” Though black holes are typically invisible, researchers can use gravitational microlensing to see how they warp and distort light from distant stars with their powerful gravitational field. 

According to UC Berkeley’s astronomy department, black holes are “one of the most exotic phenomena in astrophysics.” Their website says that there’s an estimated 100 million stellar-black holes in the Milky Way galaxy, and Science Daily reported that the UC Berkeley team now estimates that there are 200 million black holes. The outlet says that pinpointing how many there are in total will help astronomers better understand how stars die – potentially shining more light on the evolution of our galaxy.

For now, Lu’s team says that it’s not possible to determine whether OB110462 is a black hole or a neutron star, but they hope to gather more data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and conduct more detailed analyses later on.  


“As much as we would like to say it is definitively a black hole, we must report all allowed solutions,” Lu told Science Daily. “This includes both lower mass black holes and possibly even a neutron star.” 
  

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Dinosaur bones found in Bonneville County belong to T-Rex relative

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POCATELLO — Bones found in Bonneville County by an Idaho State University professor belonged to a relative of the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

L.J. Krumenacker, an adjunct professor of geosciences at ISU, found a femur bone he says is the oldest Cretaceous-age tyrannosaur bone found in North America, according to a news release from the university.

“This fossil shows that a variety of tyrannosaurs were present in western North America around 100 million years ago and well before these types of animals became the dominant predators near the end of the age of dinosaurs,” Krumenacker says in the release.

Krumenacker, who is also an affiliate curator at the Idaho Museum of Natural History, published an article in the Journal of Paleontology regarding the discovery.

The discovery was made in the Caribou Mountains.

“Southeastern Idaho has a lot of potential for further discoveries of ancient life from the age of dinosaurs and other times in history,” Krumenacker says in the release. “We have found lots of fossil fragments that show there is a great diversity of ancient dinosaurs and other animals from Idaho left to discover and learn more about.”

Based on the size of the partial femur bone discovered by Krumenacker, the animal is estimated to have weighed around 100 pounds. It is believed to be related to a similar tyrannosaur whose remains were found in Utah.

A partial femur bone from a Tyrannosaurus-like dinosaur and an approximation of how large the dinosaur would have been. | Courtesy Idaho State University

The fossil is currently in North Carolina being studied. But its permanent home will be at the Idaho Museum of Natural History in Pocatello. It will be featured in a 2023 exhibit, “Idaho Dinosaurs.”

The museum is commissioning a reconstruction of the dinosaur for the exhibit, according to the release.

“This new tyrannosaur is a reminder that scientific discovery is ongoing,” museum curator Brandon Peecook said in the release. “We’re excited to showcase the new specimen to the public not only as a cool fossil but also as a source of data for future science into the history of life.”

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Marbled crayfish born in aquarium is spreading over Earth

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In Jordan Peele’s incredible 2019 horror film Us, an army of human doppelgängers called The Tethered arise to take the place of the existing human population. It hits at some of our core fears, that we might actually be the monsters, and that some other version of ourselves might usurp our favored place upon the Earth. It’s later revealed that the Tethered are genetic clones created by the government and abandoned.

Human cloning is, as yet, still beyond our reach. But nature has the process locked down. A number of animals including some reptiles, birds, and sharks clone themselves through asexual reproduction known as parthenogenesis. That elite club of clone animals has a new member.

Over the last few decades, the planet has been at the mercy of a ten-legged, many-clawed crustacean ravenously creating a clone army bent on world domination. No, it isn’t an interplanetary interloper or the result of an uncontained government experiment. This is biology gone wrong, or if you happen to be a marbled crayfish, biology gone horribly right.

Today, the freshwater marbled crayfish populates various ecosystems across Asia, Europe, and Africa, and they all trace back to a single genetically identical individual born less than three decades ago. Their precise population numbers are unknown, but there are an estimated 23,000 living in a single small lake in Germany, which measures less than a tenth of a square kilometer, so it stands to reason there are a lot of them.

Their invasive nature and rapid spread across a significant portion of the planet made them an intriguing target for scientific investigation. An international team of scientists completed an analysis of their genome in an effort to uncover their origin and found that they were stranger than we could have dreamed. Their findings were published in the journal Nature Ecology Evolution.

The genome of the marbled crayfish has 3.5 million base pairs — that’s more than the human genome — comprised of roughly 21,000 genes from 92 chromosomes. What’s unusual is that instead of the expected two copies of their chromosomes, marbled crayfish have three. Their genetic composition is similar to the Slough crayfish, a close relative, leading scientists to conclude that the first marbled crayfish was born through an unusual reproductive happenstance when two Slough crayfish mated.

What’s more, it appears that the Slough parents hail from different parts of the world, making it unlikely that they met in the wild. Instead, it’s believed they might have been dropped in the same aquarium tank and met in captivity where they would later give birth to their unusual progeny.

That might have been the end of the story, but this new genetic aberration must somehow have escaped the tank — or else one of its own cloned offspring did — and made its way into the wild. It’s often thought that clonal species are at higher risk because they lack the genetic diversity which comes with sexual reproduction, but that hasn’t been a challenge for the marbled crayfish, at least thus far.

Despite its unusual origin and asexual reproductive strategy, it has succeeded in gaining a clawhold all over the world. While it hasn’t yet appeared in the wilds of the United States, some areas are taking preventative action, naming them as prohibited, even in the aquarium trade where they have become popular.

It’s a worthwhile strategy. Once they find their way into an ecosystem, there’s likely no stopping them. A single individual can lay 700 eggs, all copies of itself, and they can survive drought conditions by burrowing into the ground and migrate over land. All the while, they outcompete and reduce the numbers of endemic species.

Let’s just hope the marbled crayfish never sets its sights on humanity. If they do, we may never be able to stop them.

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A new dinosaur discovered was a ‘huge’ 32-foot-long predator with a crocodile face, say scientists

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  • Remains of Europe’s largest-ever land-based dinosaur were discovered in England, scientists say.

  • The prehistoric bones belonged to a two-legged, crocodile-faced dinosaur.

  • University of Southampton paleontologists said the predator was 32ft long and lived 125 million years ago.

Dinosaur remains found off the south coast of England could be the largest land predator that ever roamed Europe, scientists say.

Paleontologists from the University of Southampton identified the prehistoric bones as belonging to a type of two-legged, crocodile-faced predatory dinosaur known as spinosaurids.

The carnivore would have measured more than 32 feet long and lived around 125 million years ago.

PhD student Chris Barker, who led the study, said it was a “huge animal” that probably weighed several tonnes.

“Judging from some of the dimensions, it appears to represent one of the largest predatory dinosaurs ever found in Europe – maybe even the biggest yet known,” Barker said.

“It’s a shame it’s only known from a small amount of material, but these are enough to show it was an immense creature.”

The bones, which were discovered on the Isle of Wight, include huge pelvic and tail vertebrae.

This Isle of Wight has been dubbed”dinosaur island” due to its being a rich repository of dinosaur remains. No fewer than 29 species have been recorded in its soft clays and sandstones that erode quickly, revealing the secrets of life on planet earth more than 100 million years ago.

The latest discovery has been nicknamed the “white rock spinosaurid” after the geological layer in which it was found. Researchers said that it hasn’t yet been given a formal scientific name.

The dinosaur would have lived at the beginning of a period of rising sea levels and would have stalked lagoonal waters and sandflats in search of food, scientists said.

Researchers previously said that spinosaurids’ unusual, crocodile-like skulls allowed them to hunt prey on both land and in water.

The team now hopes to strip thin sections of the material to scan the microscopic internal properties of the bones to shed light on the animal’s growth rate and possible age.

“Most of these amazing fossils were found by Nick Chase, one of Britain’s most skilled dinosaur hunters, who sadly died just before the COVID epidemic,” said co-author Jeremy Lockwood, a PhD student at the University of Portsmouth and Natural History Museum.

“I was searching for remains of this dinosaur with Nick and found a lump of the pelvis with tunnels bored into it, each about the size of my index finger. We think they were caused by bone-eating larvae of a type of scavenging beetle.

The discovery of the white rock spinosaurid follows earlier work on spinosaurids done by the same team, who last year published a study on the discovery of two new species.

“This new animal bolsters our previous argument – published last year – that spinosaurid dinosaurs originated and diversified in western Europe before becoming more widespread,”  co-author Darren Naish said.

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Europe’s ‘largest predatory dinosaur’ found by UK fossil hunter

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An artist’s depiction of the massive White Rock spinosaurid.

A giant crocodile-faced dinosaur, discovered on the Isle of Wight by one of Britain’s best fossil hunters, was probably the largest predator ever to stalk Europe, scientists said on Thursday.

Most of the bones of the two-legged spinosaurid were found by the late local collector Nick Chase, who dedicated his life to combing the beaches of the island on England’s southern coast for dinosaur remains.

Researchers at the University of Southampton then used the few bones available to identify what they have called the “White Rock spinosaurid”, they said in a study published in the journal PeerJ.

“This was a huge animal, exceeding 10 metres (33 feet) in length and judging from some of the dimensions, probably represents the largest predatory dinosaur ever found in Europe,” said Chris Barker, a Ph.D. student who led the study.

While admitting it would be better to have more bones, Barker told AFP the “numbers don’t lie—it is bigger than the biggest known specimen” previously found in Europe.

Thomas Richard Holtz, a vertebrate paleontologist from the University of Maryland not involved in study, agreed that the new find “does seem to be larger” than a huge predator whose fossilised remains were discovered in Portugal.

Matt Lamanna, a dinosaur palaeontologist at Carnegie Museum of Natural History in the US, praised the “excellent, thorough study of the specimen” given the lack of bones, but said it was difficult to compare sizes.

For example, he said the biggest known spinosaurid, the Spinosaurus, was likely the longest such dinosaur “but it probably wasn’t as heavy” as the Tyrannosaurus rex or the Giganotosaurus—”the latter of which is about to become super-famous thanks to the new ‘Jurassic World’ movie”.

The best preserved bones of the Wight Rock spinosaurid, incluing a tail vertebra that helped indicate its massive size.

Why the long face?

The White Rock spinosaurid—which the researchers hope to formally name as a new species—is from the Early Cretaceous period and is estimated to be around 125 million years old.

Barker said that makes it the youngest spinosaurid found in Britain, two or three million years younger than the well-known Baryonyx.

Spinosaurids are known for their elongated heads. Rather than having the boxy skull of a Tyrannosaurus rex, their faces look more like that of a crocodile.

A leading theory to explain this trait is that they hunted in water as well as on land.

“They’re kind of like storks and herons, wading in and snatching fish from the surface,” Barker said.

The White Rock spinosaurid was discovered in a coastal lagoon environment where few dinosaur fossils are normally found.

“It helps start to paint a picture of what animals were living in the time, which is a very poorly known part of English palaeontological heritage,” Barker added.

Nick Chase, who the scientists called ‘one of Britain’s most skilled dinosaur hunters’, found most of the new spinosaurid bones.

The team had already identified two new spinosaurid species on the Isle of Wight, including the Ceratosuchops inferodios—dubbed the “hell heron”.

“This new animal bolsters our previous argument—published last year—that spinosaurid dinosaurs originated and diversified in western Europe before becoming more widespread,” study co-author Darren Naish said.

Collector’s ‘uncanny ability’

The palaeontologists paid tribute to Chase, who always donated whatever bones he found to museums.

“Most of these amazing fossils were found by Nick Chase, one of Britain’s most skilled dinosaur hunters, who sadly died just before the COVID epidemic,” said study co-author Jeremy Lockwood, a Ph.D. student at the University of Portsmouth.

Barker said Chase’s “uncanny ability” to find bones showed that “it’s not just professional palaeontologists who are making impacts in the discipline”.

The discovery “highlights the fact that collectors have a big role to play in modern palaeontology and their generosity helps move science forwards”, he added.

And if there any aspiring fossil hunters hoping to pick up where Chase left off, the palaeontologists would welcome more White Rock spinosaurid bones.

“We hope that a passerby might pick up some bits and donate them,” Barker said.

Europe’s largest land predator unearthed on the Isle of Wight

More information:
Chris T. Barker et al, A European giant: a large spinosaurid (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the Vectis Formation (Wealden Group, Early Cretaceous), UK, PeerJ (2022). DOI: 10.7717/peerj.13543
Journal information:
PeerJ

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