Joe Thompson, a fossil guide for British tour group Wight Coast Fossils, stumbled on a rare purple dinosaur footprint while exploring the Wessex Formation on the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight is the largest island off England’s coast and shares its name with the county. Located just 5 kilometers from the British mainland, the island rises to 240 meters above sea level and covers 381 square kilometers, with a mix of hills and flat areas.
The one-meter-long footprint was exposed by recent storms that stripped away layers of gravel on Shepherd’s Chine beach. While searching for fossilized bones, Thompson noticed a large purple toe impression protruding from the gravel, the Jerusalem Post reported. The unusual color of the imprint is due to minerals in the rock. Thompson says the footprint belongs to a large ornithopod—likely an Iguanodon or a close relative. Iguanodons were herbivores from the early Cretaceous, growing over 10 meters long and weighing around three tons. They had big thumbs with distinctive spikes used to defend against predators.
Thompson said the remarkably well-preserved footprint will probably disappear within a few months. Iguanodon tracks are rare and fragile, often preserved in sedimentary rock that later erodes. “It’s a shame that such footprints aren’t eternal; they wash away after some time. Therefore, this find needs to be documented quickly,” Thompson added.
Wight Coast Fossils shared photos of the footprint on social media, warning that clay tracks like this are often short-lived and deteriorate quickly after surfacing. The find reinforces the Isle of Wight’s reputation as a dinosaur fossil hotspot. The discovery came just weeks after paleontologists uncovered the largest collection of dinosaur footprints in the U.K., dating back 166 million years. Those 200 prints, found in an Oxfordshire quarry, recorded trails of sauropods and megalosaurs. The Isle of Wight, also rich in fossils, has produced numerous paleontological discoveries. The Wessex Formation dates to the early Cretaceous, roughly 110 to 140 million years ago, when the area was a dinosaur-filled floodplain.
