subject: Fossil Hunting In The Isle Of Wight [print this page] This summer, if you want to entertain and educate the kids you do not have to go too far. Children of all ages have a fascination with dinosaurs and fossils and one of the best places to go if you want to combine a perfect family holiday with the thrills of prehistory is the Isle of Wight.
A combination of location and geology has made it the perfect place to find fossils. In fact, the Isle of Wight is one of the richest locations for dinosaur finds in the whole of Europe as well as being a convenient and appealing family holiday destination.
It was an independent kingdom briefly in the 15th century as well as being home to the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Queen Victoria, who built Osborne House as a summer residence at East Cowes.
It is also where the last surviving UK red squirrels are making a stand. It is as one of the richest locations for dinosaur fossils in Europe that the Isle of Wight continues to hit the scientific headlines.
The Isle of Wight is blessed with warmer than average climate today, but 120 million years ago the IOW was a subtropical paradise teeming with land and marine life.
Situated close to the equator, sandwiched between what is now Cornwall and Belgium, the Island was home to many prehistoric creatures. The commonest of all these prehistoric Island inhabitants was a plant-eater called Iguanodon, which stood about five metres tall.
As many as three hundred fossilised skeletons of these giants have been discovered on the Island to date.
The 11 mile stretch of sandstone and clay in the Sandown area, known to geologists as the Wealdon outcrop, is a truly prolific reservoir of dinosaur fossils. Over 15 types of dinosaur are known to have inhabited the Island and a new species is discovered on average every three years.
One of the most recent Isle of Wight dinosaur discoveries was unearthed by local dino hunter Gavin Leng in 1997. Called Eotyrannus lengi, it is an early relative of Tyrannosaurus Rex and was a meat eating dinosaur about 15 ft (4.5 m) long that lived during the middle Cretaceous period about 120 to 125 million years ago. That pre-dates Tyrannosaurus Rex by nearly 80 million years.
Getting to the Isle of Wight could not be easier as Isle of Wight ferries operate between the mainland and the island every day of the year on three routes across the Solent.
Routes operate from Portsmouth to Fishbourne, Lymington to Yarmouth or Portsmouth to Ryde with crossings taking from around 18 to 35 minutes. It is a great way to start a family holiday, and more importantly it feels like you are going on holiday because you have to take an IOW ferry, an adventure in itself for the kids.
