Most British dinosaur material has been recovered from rocks in south-east England. These range from early Jurassic to middle Cretaceous in age. The early Cretaceous fauna of the Isle of Wight, Sussex, Surrey, Kent and Dorset is the most diverse of this age in the world. Important elements are Iguanodon, the gracile ornithopod Hypsilophodon , sauropods, theropods, ankylosaurs and the primitive pachycephalosaur or bonehead Yaverlandia . Earlier Triassic dinosaur remains of small theropods and prosauropods have been found in South Wales and Somerset.
Dinosaur remains from the Triassic and middle Jurassic periods have also been found in Scotland.
The youngest British dinosaur remains are some fragments of a hadrosaur and a nodosaurid ankylosaur, which are of middle Cretaceous age. These three genera represent very different types of dinosaur - a carnivorous biped, a plant eating biped and an armoured quadruped. They were, however, at first thought to be simply giant reptiles. It was the British palaeontologist Sir Richard Owen who recognised that they belonged to a distinct and extinct group of animals. In 1842 he coined the name Dinosauria for this group.