Pronunciation: bri-STO-nee-us
Meaning: Belonging to Brighstone
Author/s: Lockwood et al. (2021)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Isle of Wight, UK
Acta Ordinal: #1062
Brighstoneus simmondsi
Before Brighstoneus was officially named in 2021, it had spent more than four decades in museum drawers, misidentified as a species of Iguanodon and forgotten as the predatory theropod it was discovered alongside—Neovenator salerii—hogged the limelight.
(Belonging to Brighstone, in honour of Simmonds)Etymology
Brighstoneus is derived from "Brighstone" (a village on the Isle of Wight, close to the excavation site and home to the Reverend William Fox, a celebrated Victorian fossil collector whose discoveries had a major impact on early dinosaurian research) and the Latin "-ius" (belonging to).
The species epithet, simmondsi, honours local fossil collector Keith Simmonds, who was credited as "discoverer of the specimen".
ZooBank registry: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:4039F487-E242-45CF-ABF3-20AD0031FFE6.
Discovery
The remains of Brighstoneus were first discovered alongside a theropod called
Neovenator salerii in a plant debris bed (L9) of the Wessex Formation, after a storm-caused cliff fall from Grange Chine onto the beach of Brighstone Bay, Isle of Wight, England, by the Henwood Family, who were on holiday from Basingstoke, in 1978.
The holotype (MIWG 6344) includes a partial skull, eight back vertebrae, fourteen ribs, a block of hip vertebrae, six tail vertebrae, a partial pelvis and a right thigh.
Some parts of the same individual (including two back vertebrae and other fragments) remain in private ownership. If we were the suspicious types, we might be inclined to think that the private owners are the Henwoods, and they weren't officially named as discoverers out of spite.
