A family out for a beach walk stumbled upon eight dinosaur footprints.
Vicky Ballinger and her two children, Lyla and Immy, were thrilled to discover a total of eight dinosaur footprints in Bexhill, East Sussex.
Ms Ballinger explained that high tides and heavy rains had revealed the tracks, which had been hidden under the sand.
She filmed the prints and shared the video on YouTube. Vicky thinks the footprints might have been left by an iguanodon.
She said: “It’s actually quite beautiful to see these amazing dinosaur footprints that my children and I found when we came on a walk.”
“The kids loved that they could see the track of a dinosaur and walk where it walked – it was very exciting. The tide and the heavy rains have washed a lot of sand away recently.
“I grew up in Bexhill and I’ve never seen these ones before.”
She added: “I believe they are iguanodon footprints – they aren’t T-rex tracks as they were not about in England.”
Ms Ballinger took her discovery to the local Bexhill Museum, who plan to investigate further this week. The area from Bexhill to Fairlight is known for its dinosaur track casts and prints.
In 2018, over 85 footprints from the Cretaceous period were found near cliffs between Hastings and Fairlight. These footprints belonged to at least seven different species and even showed details of skin and scales.
The rocks around Bexhill are about 140 million years old and hold the remains of the dinosaurs that used to live there when it was surrounded by freshwater.
Over time, fossils of several dinosaur species have been discovered – including Iguanodon, Megalosaurus, Baryonyx, Polacanthus and the tooth of a Velociraptor-type creature. Many of these are now displayed at Bexhill Museum.
The Cretaceous is a geological period that lasted from roughly 145 to 66 million years ago.
