A DINOSAUR-obsessed five-year-old had the find of a lifetime after spotting a 100 million-year-old fossil on the beach.
Little Henry Dibb-Fuller stumbled upon the ultra-rare Micraster, which looks like a preserved brain, while trying to find skipping stones at St. Margaret’s-at-Cliffe in Kent.
Henry Dibb-Fuller, 5, found an ultra-rare 100 million-year-old fossil on Kent beach[/caption]
The fossil, which looks like a preserved brain, is commonly known as a heart urchin[/caption]
Commonly known as a heart urchin, it existed in the Late Cretaceous period.
Mum Sam, 47, said: “He’s always picking up random things.
“He said to me, ‘it’s even older than you, mummy!’
“He’s quite proud of it now even though it’s a random rare find.
“He can’t believe he now has something that existed at the same time as the dinosaurs.”
Meanwhile scientists have found that dinosaurs would have been plagued by dodgy backs and knees.
Experts say theropods, two-legged beasts like Tyrannosaurus, were “blighted by bone diseases”.
It means ferocious predators built for power and speed — such as T.rex, allosaurus and velociraptor — may have hobbled in pain, just like afflicted humans.
Fossils showed signs of fused vertebrae and strange growths on the leg bones of three theropods dug up in South America.
Study author Dr Mattia Baiano, from the National University of Rio Negro in Argentina, reckons some giant dinos came down with arthritis or even gout.
Both conditions see painful swelling in the joints and may be triggered by injuries, old age or being overweight.
Backs and hind legs were the dinosaurs’ top problem areas but they also suffered bone damage in their jaws and arms.
Writing in the journal BMC Ecology and Evolution, Dr Baiano said: “A large number of theropod specimens have evidence of some type of malady.
“Damage in weight-bearing bones would hamper the feeding activities or would leave them an easy target for predators.”
The dinosaurs in the study were 70million to 90million-year-old abelisaurids, which came just before Tyrannosaurs.
