David's find rewrites history

The Natural History Museum has confirmed that what David, of Crowmere Avenue, had uncovered was a tail-spike from a giant armoured plant-eater called Polacanthus.

The fossil is only the fifth of its kind confirmed in the UK.

Delighted Rother museums curator Julian Porter says the significance of the find is that the 20ft long 1.5 tonne Polacanthus was previously not thought to have inhabited this part of the world.

Polacanthus lived 135 million years ago in the Cretaceous Period.

Dave, who has spent 10 years scouring local siltstone and clay beds, has found the remains of prehistoric sharks and crocodiles in the same beds, once part of a long-vanished estuary system

It is possible that Polacanthus was the prey of fearsome meat-eaters such as Baryonyx or Megalosaurus..

But, says Julian, Polacanthus would not have been easy meat. It was in effect a living tank - protected by heavy body armour including a sacral shield over its pelvis that was as big as a coffee table and armed with terrible spikes which could inflict grievous injury on an incautious predator.

David's earlier find of part of this sacral shield set him on the hunt for more of Polacanthus.

The spike Dave Brockhurst has found would have been one of a series along Polacanthus' tail.

Julian says: "This tail-spike is a very important find for Bexhill because this was a species that we previously didn't know lived here.

"We knew that Iguanodon lived here. But now we are building up a knowledge of something like an eco-system."

Putting the find in context, David says: "They say that possibly one per cent of everything that ever lived is fossilised so we miss a huge amount."

Julian welcomes this addition to Bexhill Museum's collection but says: "I think I need a bigger case - in fact I need a bigger museum!"

What does it feel like when hours of searching reveal a find of such significance?

David sums it up in one word: "Brilliant!"