{"id":663870,"date":"2026-06-29T06:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T06:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/663870\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T06:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T06:12:14","slug":"antarcticas-first-ever-dinosaur-bone-discovered-in-a-drawer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/663870\/","title":{"rendered":"Antarctica&#8217;s first ever dinosaur bone discovered in a drawer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dr Mark Evans, the collections manager at BAS, recently spotted the fossil amongst  thousands of specimens brought back from expeditions to Antarctica over the decades.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s only when you start thinking &#8216;what&#8217;s in this drawer&#8217;, that sometimes you come across something and you think, &#8216;Ah, this looks interesting&#8217;,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The specimen was originally collected on James Ross Island and its discovery was recorded in a field notebook kept by geologist Dr Mike Thomson.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Alongside a tiny, neat sketch of the fossil dated 9 December 1985 he has written &#8220;vertebra of large reptile&#8221;, noting it was about 10cm wide.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Evans says the team that found it probably thought the fossil belonged to a marine reptile.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But as soon as he saw it, Evans realised the vertebra looked very dinosaur-like. And the date of its discovery meant it would have been the first dinosaur fossil found on the continent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr Mark Evans, the collections manager at BAS, recently spotted the fossil amongst thousands of specimens brought back&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-663870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}