“The Isle of Wight has the most diverse dinosaur fauna of anywhere in Europe. In fact, it has more dinosaurs and other four-legged animals of that time than almost anywhere else in the world.

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Our dinosaurs lived during the Early Cretaceous, between 125 and 130 million years ago. At that time, what is now the Isle of Wight was roughly where Gibraltar is today. As a result of this and global warming - far greater than anything we are talking about today - the climate was much hotter. During the summers, drought conditions prevailed but there were frequent thunderstorms. Lightning often started wildfires. Sometimes heavy rain after these caused localised floods which produced debris flows, (a sort of mudslide). These swept up all the bones and other debris lying on a river floodplain where the dinosaurs were living and rapidly buried them. This is why we have so many fossils but sadly few complete skeletons, as everything got jumbled up during the floods.

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Apart from the dinosaurs there were about 10 different kinds of crocodile living here at the time ranging in size from massive River Nile-sized animals to tiny, snail-eating ones, no more than about half a meter long. Living with these were tiny mammals, frogs, salamanders, lizards, turtles, big pterosaurs and just about anything else you can think of including, in the freshwater river and ponds, bony fishes and sharks. A truly remarkable world.”