Yaverland Fossil Hunting

1835 – dinosaur remains were already being reported from Yaverland
Yaverland has one of the longest fossil-discovery histories on the Isle of Wight. The site account notes that dinosaur remains were being reported from the cliffs and foreshore as early as 1835, making it one of the classic Wealden dinosaur localities on the island.

1930 – the fossil later named Yaverlandia bitholus was discovered north of the seawall below Yaverland Battery
The holotype of Yaverlandia, consisting of parts of the skull roof, was discovered in 1930 in the Wealden marls at Yaverland. It became one of the locality’s most famous fossils because it was eventually recognised as belonging to a distinct animal named after the site itself.

1936 – the Yaverland skull was first assigned to Vectisaurus
Before its true significance was understood, the 1930 Yaverland specimen was assigned to Vectisaurus. This is an important step in the history of the fossil because it shows how difficult some of the Isle of Wight dinosaur remains were to interpret in the early years of study.

1971 – Yaverlandia bitholus was formally named by Peter Galton
Peter Galton re-examined the 1930 skull material and concluded that it represented a distinct genus, which he named Yaverlandia bitholus. This made Yaverland the type locality for one of the most unusual small dinosaurs ever described from the Isle of Wight.

2012 – a second specimen of Yaverlandia was discovered on a school fossil-hunting trip
A second specimen referable to Yaverlandia was discovered at Yaverland in 2012 by a student on a school fossil-hunting trip. This was especially important because for many years the animal had been known from only a single specimen.

2020 – the pterosaur Wightia declivirostris was described from a Yaverland specimen found by John Winch
A partial pterosaur snout found near the cliffs at Yaverland by amateur palaeontologist John Winch was described in 2020 as Wightia declivirostris. This was an important discovery because it represented the first tapejarid pterosaur reported from the Wessex Formation of the Isle of Wight.

2023 – rare iguanodontian dinosaur footprints were uncovered on Yaverland seafront
In 2023, scientists from the Environment Agency, JBA Consulting and Dinosaur Isle Museum reported rare dinosaur footprints on Yaverland seafront. The three-toed prints were interpreted as likely belonging to Mantellisaurus, and the discovery showed that the dinosaur-bearing land surface probably extends along much of Yaverland beach.

2026 – the second Yaverland specimen of Yaverlandia was formally described
The second Yaverland specimen discovered in 2012 was formally described in 2026. This was a major milestone because it added new material to one of the site’s most enigmatic dinosaurs and showed that Yaverlandia remains important in modern debates about the identity of these unusual remains.

Modern understanding – Yaverland remains one of the Isle of Wight’s classic dinosaur and footprint localities
Today Yaverland is recognised as an important Early Cretaceous site for dinosaur bones, footprints and other vertebrate fossils from the Wessex Formation. Its importance lies not only in named discoveries such as Yaverlandia and Wightia, but also in the continued appearance of footprints and rolled dinosaur material on the foreshore.

WEALDEN GROUP

Wessex Formation (Barremian)

The Yaverland Wessex section is not a single clean vertical cliff log. It is a composite upper Wessex succession exposed around Yaverland Battery, the old sea wall, the car-park foreshore and the northern end of Sandown Bay, with more than 50 m of strata logged in the published numbered section. This page follows the published Radley bed numbers where they are known, but combines them into practical site-use intervals because the cliffs are changeable, fallen blocks are common, and several important horizons are better seen on the foreshore than in the cliff face.

Bed Y1 — Radley Beds 1–8: Lower Exposed Floodplain Mudstones And Track-Bearing Crevasse-Splay Sands

The lowest exposed Yaverland Wessex beds are dominated by red, purple and variegated silty mudstones of the alluvial floodplain, with subordinate thin sandstones laid down as crevasse splays or small sheet-flood bodies. Radley’s Beds 6 and 8 are the first important track-bearing horizons in the section. They yielded small ornithopod footprints, and Bed 8 also produced a large four-toed print about 55 cm across, generally interpreted as having been made by either a thyreophoran or a sauropod. These beds show repeated flooding of muddy floodplain surfaces, brief establishment of shallow standing water or soft substrate, and rapid burial beneath sand.

Bed Y2 — Radley Beds 9–15: Lower–Middle Point-Bar And Plant-Bed Interval

This interval contains alternating floodplain mudstones, channel-margin sands and one of the more distinctive lower plant-debris horizons of the section. Radley Bed 12, occasionally exposed on the foreshore below the Yaverland car park, may consist almost entirely of plant material in a fine sand to mudstone matrix. Higher in the interval, Radley Bed 15 represents a point-bar or channel-sand sequence with two separate trackway-bearing levels. It is strongly dinoturbated, with numerous small tridactyl tracks and sand-filled casts, but the better-preserved impressions are attributable to large ornithopods; a single theropod track was recorded about 1.5 m below the top of the bed. This package records active river-channel migration across a vegetated floodplain already heavily used by dinosaurs.

Bed Y3 — Radley Beds 16–24: Middle Floodplain Beds, Sideritic Plant Debris And Dinoturbated Surface

Radley Beds 16–24 return to dominantly floodplain sedimentation, with red and mottled silty mudstones, subordinate siltstones and local sand bodies. Bed 22 is a plant-debris bed in a siltstone matrix with abundant siderite concretions and comparatively little pyrite; it is a useful horizon because it shows that not all Yaverland plant beds are strongly pyritized or equally vertebrate-rich. Bed 24 is another dinoturbated horizon carrying small sand-filled casts of large ornithopod tracks. The interval as a whole represents repeated occupation of low-lying floodplain hollows by shallow water and vegetation, interrupted by episodes of drying, trampling and minor sediment influx.

Bed Y4 — Radley Beds 26–30: Stacked Plant-Debris Bed Complex

In the middle–upper part of the exposed Yaverland section, several plant-debris beds occur in close proximity within Radley Beds 26–30. These are grey siltstone- to mudstone-rich horizons above irregular erosional bases and contain washed-in wood, charcoalified plant fragments, mud clasts and sideritic concretions, together with local vertebrate material. Rather than representing one isolated fossil bed, this part of the section records repeated establishment of floodplain ponds, abandoned channels or shallow topographic lows that repeatedly trapped plant matter and vertebrate debris. It is one of the clearest signs that the Yaverland vertebrate record is tied to recurring low-energy debris-accumulation events on the Wessex alluvial plain.

Bed Y5 — Radley Bed 33: Upper Plant-Debris Bed With Seeds, Spores And Pterosaur Material

Radley Bed 33 is an upper plant-debris horizon notable for the preservation of seeds and spores and for yielding pterosaur material from the Yaverland section. It is one of the more palaeobotanically informative beds in the upper exposed Wessex here and belongs to the typical grey plant-rich facies that contrast so strongly with the red alluvial mudstones around them. The bed demonstrates that the upper Yaverland floodplain supported lush vegetation and periodically trapped vertebrate remains in quiet-water settings; it is also the horizon associated with the pterodactyloid material described from Yaverland.

Bed Y6 — Radley Beds 34–35: Upper Track-Bearing Sandstones

These upper sandstones are important footprint horizons, especially for large ornithopods. Both beds have yielded tracks and underside casts, and Bed 35 is particularly well known because blocks fallen onto the beach commonly preserve large prints, some around 60 cm long. The beds are best interpreted as shallow sheet-sands or crevasse-splay sands laid across soft muddy surfaces on the floodplain. The presence of tracks in both the bedding surfaces and the undersides of overlying blocks shows how rapidly some of these trampled surfaces were buried and preserved.

Bed Y7 — Radley Bed 38: Upper Vertebrate-Rich Plant-Debris Bed (c. 0.5–1.25 m; about 4 m below the top of the Wessex Formation)

Radley Bed 38 is one of the most important vertebrate horizons at Yaverland. It is a typical upper Wessex plant-debris bed resting on a sharp undulatory base that fills a partly eroded dinosaur-trampled surface. Its basal part may contain a conglomeratic lag of reworked calcrete nodules, other intraformational clasts, plant remains and vertebrate debris; above lies grey silty clay rich in poorly sorted plant material, including fusain, with small siderite concretions, pyrite nodules, unionoid bivalves and abundant vertebrate remains. The bed grades upward into overlying mudstone rather than ending sharply. Later screen-washing has shown this horizon to be one of the most productive Yaverland microvertebrate beds, yielding mammals and other small vertebrates as well as the larger reptilian and fish remains expected from Wessex plant-debris deposits.

Bed Y8 — Historical Upper Silty Bone-Bed And Topmost Wessex Mottled Marls Below The Vectis Base

White’s historical section at Yaverland records the top of the Wessex Formation as about 15 m of variegated clays and marls with bands of cross-bedded sand, overlain by about 6 m of green, red and variegated clays behind the old sea wall, then by a pale greenish-grey silty bed about 0.45 m thick containing rolled concretions, pyritized and carbonized wood, Margaritifera-like unionoid bivalves, reptilian bones and Lepidotes scales, and finally by about 3 m of grey marl with coloured mottling and irregular large calcareous nodules in the upper part. This upper silty bed east of the old wall below Yaverland Battery was historically one of the principal sources of wave-washed bones. It belongs to the highest Wessex floodplain and shallow-water facies immediately below the abrupt lithological and environmental shift into the grey lagoonal beds of the Vectis Formation, but it should not be forced into a one-to-one correlation with any single later Radley bed number unless the exposure itself makes that secure.

Exposed Wessex Formation At Yaverland: More Than 50 Metres Of The Upper Formation In The Published Numbered Section

Vectis Formation (Barremian)

Yaverland to Red Cliff is the primary reference section for the Vectis Formation and its formal members. At this part of the coast the formation can be followed from the sharp top-Wessex change into grey lagoonal mudstones, up through the Barnes High Sandstone, and into the upper rhythmic Shepherd’s Chine Member. The section is composite and partly landslipped, but the formation is more completely represented here than at most other Isle of Wight coastal sites.

Cowleaze Chine Member

Bed Y9 — Lower Cowleaze Chine Member: Basal Grey Clays, Desiccation Surface And Lepidotes Horizon

The base of the Vectis Formation rests sharply on a yellow-grey mottled palaeosol developed at the top of the Wessex Formation. Above it, the lower Cowleaze Chine Member consists of dark slightly silty grey clays carrying brackish bivalves, including the Filosina-bearing horizons noted low in the section. About 0.8 m above the base a conspicuous desiccation surface with large polygonal cracks is developed, the cracks being filled by darker greenish clay; a concentration of Lepidotes bones and scales rests on this surface, and a thin lag of berthierine-rich clay pellets occurs just above. This lower member records a restricted lagoonal setting that periodically dried out, was reworked, and fluctuated between freshwater, brackish and marine influence.

Bed Y10 — Upper Cowleaze Chine Member: Silty Grey Clays, Ostracods, Viviparus Siltstone And Thin Ironstone

Higher in the Cowleaze Chine Member, the succession includes grey shales and silty clays with ostracods and bivalves, local silty lenses, pyritic concretions and a siderite-cemented siltstone yielding Viviparus moulds. In older descriptions the member at Yaverland was logged as about 10.5 m of grey shales with molluscs and ostracods, together with a thin ironstone band. The fauna and sedimentary structures show a low-energy lagoonal to marginal-estuarine setting, with repeated salinity change, quiet-water shell accumulation and intermittent minor sediment influx. The member is about 7–10 m thick regionally and is fully represented in the Yaverland–Red Cliff reference section.

Barnes High Sandstone Member

Bed Y11 — Barnes High Sandstone Member (c. 2.4 m at the historical Yaverland section)

The Barnes High Sandstone is a laterally persistent yellow to white, locally grey sandstone that divides the lower and upper parts of the Vectis Formation. At Yaverland it was logged historically as about 2.4 m thick, though the member is 2.5–7 m thick regionally. It represents a distinct pulse of higher-energy sand influx across the otherwise mud-dominated Vectis lagoonal–estuarine system. In the field it is one of the most useful markers in the Yaverland–Red Cliff Vectis section because it forms a much stronger, sandier bed than the grey clays above and below.

Shepherd’s Chine Member

Bed Y12 — Lower Shepherd’s Chine Member: Rhythmic Grey And Blue Mudstones, Siltstones And Fine Sandstones

The lower Shepherd’s Chine Member comprises rhythmic alternations of grey and blue mudstone, siltstone and fine sandstone, arranged in repeated fining-upward cycles. Ostracods and bivalves are common, and the facies indicate repeated alternation between shallow brackish lagoons, low-energy embayments, mudflats and marginal floodplain-waterbody settings. These rhythms are one of the characteristic features of the Vectis Formation and show that the upper Vectis was not a single uniform clay deposit but a highly variable coastal-plain and lagoonal succession.

Bed Y13 — Upper Shepherd’s Chine Member: Thin Shelly Limestones, Rare Ironstones And Beef-Bed Interval

Higher in the Shepherd’s Chine Member, the same grey and blue mudstones and siltstones are joined by several thin shelly limestones, rare ironstone layers and the distinctive beef-bed horizon recognized in the reference section. In White’s older account the upper Vectis at Yaverland was described as about 37 m of grey and blue shales with Ostrea, ostracods and unionoid-type bivalves interbedded with thin shelly limestones and rare ironstones. These beds represent repeated shallow-water expansion and contraction across a stressed lagoonal to marginal-marine landscape, with quiet sedimentation, shell concentration and intermittent early diagenetic mineralization.

Total Thickness Of The Vectis Formation At Yaverland–Red Cliff: About 50 Metres In The Classic Historical Section, With The Full Formation Present In The Reference Section

LOWER GREENSAND GROUP

Atherfield Clay Formation (Aptian)

At the north-eastern end of the Yaverland–Red Cliff section, the Vectis Formation is overlain disconformably by the basal Lower Greensand marine transgression. The Perna Member is the key horizon here and Red Cliff is one of the reference sections for the lowest Atherfield Clay on the Isle of Wight. Higher Atherfield Clay and younger Lower Greensand continue north-eastward in the Red Cliff–Culver section, but the core Yaverland locality is most important for the basal marine transgression itself.

Perna Member

Bed Y14 — Perna Member Bed 1: Blue Sandy Clay With The Atherfield Bone Bed At Its Base (c. 1.15 m)

This bed forms the main basal Atherfield Clay unit in White’s Yaverland section. It is a thick blue sandy clay resting disconformably on the Vectis Formation, with the Atherfield Bone Bed developed at its base as a transgressive lag. That lag includes quartz grit, fish teeth, phosphatic nodules, rolled ammonites and derived vertebrate debris, and historically yielded elasmobranch material including hybodont teeth. It marks the first major Aptian marine flooding surface above the Wealden lagoonal succession and records erosive reworking before mud-rich marine sedimentation became established.

Bed Y15 — Perna Member Bed 2: Calcareous Sandstone (c. 0.1 m)

A thin calcareous sandstone above the blue clay completes the classic two-bed Perna section at Yaverland. Although only about 0.1 m thick in the historical section, it is an important marker because it represents the establishment of a more openly marine shelly sandstone facies above the transgressive bone bed and muddy basal clay. In the formal Isle of Wight Lower Greensand framework, the Perna Member is characterized by exactly this combination of basal bone-bed lag, sandy mudstone and thin calcareous sandstone.

Higher Atherfield Clay Continuation At Red Cliff

Beyond the basal Perna beds, the Atherfield Clay continues at Red Cliff into higher sandy and muddy marine beds referred to the Chale Clay Member. These include brown and pale blue sandy mudstones, shell-bearing beds, pyritized wood and clay-ironstone nodules. Because these higher beds are better treated as part of the Red Cliff continuation rather than the core Yaverland dinosaur locality, they are noted here only for context and are not forced into a more detailed Yaverland bed-by-bed breakdown.

Depositional Environment

The Yaverland succession records a major environmental transition through the later Barremian into the Aptian. The Wessex Formation represents a seasonally dry to seasonally wet alluvial plain with river channels, point bars, crevasse splays, floodplain muds, shallow ponds and debris-rich plant beds that concentrated wood, fish, crocodiles, dinosaurs and other vertebrates; the dinosaur tracks formed on muddy floodplain or channel-margin surfaces and were rapidly buried beneath sand. The overlying Vectis Formation records replacement of that alluvial landscape by a low-energy lagoonal, estuarine and marginal-marine system with fluctuating salinity, periodic desiccation, ostracod- and bivalve-bearing muds, and the sandier Barnes High influx. The basal Atherfield Clay then marks a clear marine transgression, with an erosive bone bed and shallow shelf mudstone and sandstone above the top of the Wealden succession.

Total Thickness Covered Here

Treated as a composite Yaverland–Red Cliff section, the locality includes more than 50 m of upper Wessex Formation, about 50 m of Vectis Formation in the classic section, and about 1.25 m of the basal Perna Member of the Atherfield Clay Formation, giving more than 100 m of detailed lower Cretaceous stratigraphy before the higher Lower Greensand of Red Cliff is considered. It is therefore one of the most useful Isle of Wight sections for linking dinosaur-bearing Wealden continental beds directly to the earliest Aptian marine transgression.

References

White, H.J.O. (1921). A Short Account of the Geology of the Isle of Wight.
Stewart, D.J. (1978; 1981a) on the stratigraphy and sedimentology of the Isle of Wight Wessex Formation and coastal marker beds.
Daley, B. & Stewart, D.J. (1979). Formalization of the Wessex Formation and Vectis Formation terminology for the Isle of Wight Wealden succession.
Radley, J.D. (1994). Published numbered section and footprint-bearing horizons in the Yaverland Wessex Formation.
Sweetman, S.C. & Insole, A.N. (2010). The plant-debris beds of the Wessex Formation of the Isle of Wight and their significance.
Huggett, J.M., Bosence, D.W.J. and co-authors (2018) on the basal Vectis Formation at Yaverland and its palaeosols, salinity changes and environmental interpretation.
Lockwood, J.A.F., Lockley, M.G. & Pond, S.B. (2014) and later reviews of the Yaverland dinosaur footprints and in-situ track horizons.
Steel, L., Martill, D.M. and co-authors (2005) on the Yaverland pterosaur material from the Wessex Formation.
British Geological Survey Lexicon entries: Wessex Formation, Vectis Formation, Cowleaze Chine Member, Barnes High Sandstone Member, Shepherd’s Chine Member, Atherfield Clay Formation and Perna Member.
British Geological Survey, Geology of the Isle of Wight, part sheets 300, 331, 344 and 345: brief explanation.
Geological Conservation Review and JNCC site accounts for the Yaverland dinosaur beds and the Lower Cretaceous coast of eastern Sandown Bay.