Question: How many species of dinosaur lived in England?

Luke Williams answered on 10 Jun 2016:

Well, the easiest way to answer this is – none!

England didn’t exist in the time of the dinosaurs, although it is certain that they did live in the land that would one day become England and the surrounding area.

Up until a few thousand years ago, Britain was connected to Europe by a land bridge, and the earliest example of human activity is about 814,000 years ago. However, dinosaurs are many millions of years old. It would depend on exactly which period of dinosaur you are looking at. Scientifically speaking though, dinosaurs are taken to be roughly 231-65 million years ago.

During this time the supercontinent Pangaea existed. There was no Africa, Europe, Asia etc, it was all one landmass in the southern hemisphere – so there in effect was no England or anything even nearby!

Pangaea took millions of years to break up, so the answer of which dinosaurs ended up where is a bit of a tricky one to figure out – it is not in my field. Having had a quick look around, it appears that the land that would become the British Isles was hit around a bit like a ping pong ball, hitting different continents, and we were in the very middle of Pangaea, as a desert. That said, we spent a great deal of time under water, even when technically connected to large supercontinents. Either way, desert or under water, it’s difficult for any land based animal to survive.