Dinosaur prints 130 million years old found on Sussex beach

Retired biology teacher Sue Lea said she first discovered the imprints on a rock at Bexhill beach around 25 years ago, just before she moved away from the area.

She still visits the beach three times a year but had been unable to find the rock again due to changes in the shoreline.

But on her latest visit last Thursday she was overjoyed to find them again.

“Every time I go down there I look for the footprints. It was really exciting to find them again,” said Sue, who now lives in Oxford.

“There are apparently six there, but I’ve only ever found four."

The footprint has resurfaced after years beneath the sand (Image: Sue Lea)

Dinosaur fanatics have confirmed the footprints were made by an iguanodon from the early Cretaceous period.

“I just stumbled across them because usually they are covered up by the sand and shingle,” said Sue.

“Of course they are quite robust, being 130 million years old, but I never know if they may have been washed away.”

Biology buffs can often be found scouring the Sussex coastline in search of dinosaur remains.

Sue said that items can be taken to the nearby Bexhill Museum where staff can identify whether “it’s just a piece of rubbish” or dinosaur remains.

A statement from the museum’s website supports Sue’s findings that the prints are from an iguanodon from around 130 million years ago.

A model of an iguanodon (Image: Rodney Start Museum Victoria)

It says: “The landscape would have been dominated by dinosaurs and the most of the fossil remains that can be identified belonged to iguanodon, a five to ten metre long plant eating dinosaur.

READ MORE: Fossil hunter finds the world's first known dinosaur brain in Bexhill

“Bexhill is famous for the fossil dinosaur footprints that are sometimes exposed on the beach, most of these footprints have been attributed to iguanodon.

“Remains have also been found of the armoured plant-eating dinosaur hylaeosaurus and the meat eating megalosaurus and baryonyx as well as fragmentary remains of other small dinosaurs.”

In 2018, a man found the world’s first known fossilised dinosaur brain on a beach in Bexhill. It was a 133-million-year-old sample of mineralised tissue from inside a dinosaur’s skull.