When Jeremy Lockwood retired after 30 years as a Midlands GP, he didn’t choose golf or gardening. Instead, he returned to a passion he’d had since childhood — fossil hunting on the Isle of Wight. What started as a simple hobby soon led him to discoveries that would literally rewrite dinosaur history.
As a young boy, Jeremy spent countless hours searching for fossil shells and trilobites. That early curiosity stayed with him throughout his life. Years later, while visiting the Isle of Wight with his children, he began finding dinosaur bones that sparked his fascination all over again.
Museum experts told him the bones belonged to the same species — but Jeremy’s medical eye noticed something odd. The differences in the bones seemed too significant to belong to one type of dinosaur. That curiosity pushed him in a new direction.
Motivated to investigate, he enrolled in a Paleontology PhD program at the University of Portsmouth. Soon, Jeremy was spending long days examining thousands of dinosaur fossils at both the Isle of Wight Dinosaur Museum and the Natural History Museum in London.
His research initially focused on Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis, a herbivorous dinosaur. Jeremy meticulously measured and photographed hundreds of bones, cataloging nearly two centuries’ worth of discoveries. Then came the breakthrough.
While reconstructing a skull believed to be from Mantellisaurus, he noticed a surprising feature — a rounded, bulbous nose. This was completely unlike the straight-nosed Mantellisaurus known for the past century. The discovery confirmed his suspicion: this wasn’t one species at all.
That moment marked the first of three new dinosaur species Jeremy went on to identify.
Jeremy credits his medical background for his success. Studying human bones helped him recognize subtle differences — differences that many paleontologists had overlooked for decades. His work proves that many museum specimens still hold secrets waiting to be uncovered.
Today, Jeremy continues his forensic-style research, often working from his own kitchen table on the Isle of Wight. And he’s certain the story isn’t over: “There are definitely more species out there — and we’re already working on a few.”
