A Dinosaur in the Geological Column

 

A Dinosaur Discovered in the London Commuter Belt

The Guardian, 27 November 1986

 

The claw of Baryonx Walkeri.

'Baryonx Walkeri, otherwise known as Claws, emerged from 124 million years of anonymity yesterday to become the first dinosaur to be named after a plumber in Thornton Heath.

The 30 feet (9.2m) long, 11/z-2 ton carnivore has been named in honour of William Walker, the 5foott Bin, 10 stone 9 pounds amateur collector who found the first of its fossil remains. That bit accounts for the rest of its new title: Baryonx being translated from the Greek, is heavy claw.

Not only was it equipped with up to 128 teeth `like steak knives' it was also capable of wiggling its nose, according to Dr Alan Charig, one of the museum researchers who has been examining the remains of the dinosaur.

Mr Walker came across the distinctive great claw - originally about 15 ins (38 cms) long inside its long-lost protective sheath - at a brick company's clay pit, near Dorking, Surrey, in January 1983.

His son-in-law, Mr Trevor Batchelor, took it to the museum and set in train a large scale operation to retrieve the rest of the creature. In all, about 55 blocks of stone were removed from the Smokejacks Pit, near Walliswood.

They yielded about 60 per cent of the bones of the dinosaur, including parts of the skull, the unusually long snout and jaws, sections of arms, backbone, ribs and hip girdle.

Fish scales were found inside the rib cage suggesting that Claws was a fisheating dinosaur. It probably lurked beside rivers and swamps in the area then difficult to recognise as a favoured part of the Surrey stockbroker belt.

It is the first `reasonably complete' carnivorous dinosaur of its age found anywhere.'

 

Baryonx walkeri


Fish scales found inside Baryonyx' ribs
a belonging to this kind of
fish called Lepidote

British Museum (Natural History).

124 million years ago there were steep-sided mountain where London is now. The foothills were covered with London conifers, monkey puzzle trees, cyads and ferns.

A vast low-lying flood plain extended from the base of the London mountains as far as France and Belgium . Baryonx was a theropod, an extinct order of reptiles with teeth like mammals. This one was found in what is now Surrey, but what was then the edge of the flood plain, an area of large lakes, rivers and marshes, where it appears to have lived on fish and perhaps by scavenging, as crocodiles do today.

 

 

 

 


A scene in Southern England 124 million years ago on
the Wealden stage of the Cretaceous Period.

 

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Updated: August 16, 2011