Footprints of ‘Three-Toed’ Dinosaur Discovered Near Seaside Resort

Signs of a three-toed dinosaur that lived 125 million years ago have been discovered along a beach in England, scientists announced.

Engineers from the British Environment Agency recently discovered footprints that may belong to a mantellisaurus, a 23-foot-long dinosaur with three toes on each foot, they announced in a news release this week.

The team had been in the area looking for ways to reinforce defenses from sea flooding when they found the footprints off the south coast of the country.

“Dinosaurs existing right where our team is working brings old and new together – the modern challenges of combatting climate change with a period of time we can only imagine,” said the agency’s regional flood and coastal risk manager, Nick Gray, in a statement.

"We’ve all read the stories and seen the films, but this gives us just a hint of what life was like," he continued.

The fossils were unearthed around a popular vacation spot on the Isle of Wight, nestled near a beachside café, a car park, and a bus stop.

The Isle of Wight has earned a reputation for being a dinosaur treasure trove, said Martin Munt, the curator of the local Dinosaur Isle Museum.

He noted that the discovery of mantellisaurus footprints there is not surprising, as the region has yielded numerous dinosaur finds.

"The Isle of Wight is the richest dinosaur location in Europe, but this is still a wonderful find," Munt said in the release.

According to the British National History Museum, the mantellisaurus was originally misclassified as Iguanodon atherfieldensis in 1914 by amateur paleontologist Reginald Walter Hooley.

It was not until 2007 that the dinosaur was correctly identified and named Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis, as part of the Iguanodon genus revision.