A team of scientists in the United Kingdom has made an exciting discovery on the Isle of Wight—a new species of dinosaur. This remarkable find belongs to the same family as the last dinosaur

species discovered on the island nearly 150 years ago.

The recently discovered dinosaur, named Vectipelta barretti, has been given its name in honor of Paul Barrett, a professor at London's Natural History Museum (NHM). Interestingly, back in 1865, another dinosaur from the same family, called Polacanthus foxii, was found on the Isle of Wight. Both species were uncovered at a fossil site dating back 145 to 66 million years.

NHM researcher Stuart Pond expressed the significance of this discovery, stating, "For virtually 142 years, all ankylosaur remains from the Isle of Wight have been assigned to Polacanthus foxii. Now all of those finds need to be revisited because we've described this new species."

The key distinction between the two species lies in the shape of their neck and back bones. V. barretti exhibits more similarities to a Chinese variant of the ankylosaur. Based on this observation, researchers speculate that dinosaurs freely roamed between Asia and Europe.

The findings detailing the new dinosaur species have been published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, shedding new light on the ancient inhabitants of the Isle of Wight. Photo by Mariana Ruiz Villarreal LadyofHats, Wikimedia commons.