For many, life under lock and key felt lonely, as we binged on box sets, grappled with the challenges of home school, and were kept out of Zoom meetings. Jeremy Lockwood, a retired GP turned palaeontologist, had a great year in which he discovered two big dinosaur discoveries and laid plans to make the Isle of Wight famous for its prehistoric inhabitants once more. It was an exciting time for me.
A family doctor who retired seven years ago, Lockwood was behind the discovery of a new species of iguanadontian dinosaur with a distinctive large nose and a second species called the horned crocodile-faced Hell Heron.
At the beginning of the Pandemic, Lockwood volunteered to work. His daughter pointed out that before vaccines were available, hospitals wouldn't want people in their 60s walking around wards.
For the past two years, Lockwood has been on the beach and sifting through bones from the museum archives.
The scientific contributions of amateur scientists are often recognised in palaeontology. After retiring, Lockwood persuaded his wife to move to the Isle of Wight, where a steady stream of dinosaur fossils emerge from the cliffs as they are eroded. He was accepted to do a PhD at the University of Pompey after contacting Prof David Martill.
He said that he had to do something to keep him active. I don't think I could have just played golf or grown roses.
The first specimen of iguanodons, a type of dinosaur, was unearthed in Sussex in 1824 by a doctor turned palaeontologist named Gideon Mantell. The understanding of British dinosaurs has been assumed to be done and dusted by some.
Some of the dogmas have remained unquestioned. Modern methods, such as using software to cluster specimen into a most likely family tree, have not always been applied to earlier finds.
Most dinosaurs found on the Isle of Wight were assigned to one of two species. After sifting through hundreds of bones that had been sitting in boxes in the Natural History Museum and the Dinosaur Isle museum, Lockwood identified a clear outlier with an enormous nose. The finding suggests that there were more iguanadontian dinosaurs in the UK than was previously thought.
The collection of iguanadontian bones is almost like a collection of jigsaw puzzles. I am trying to put together something meaningful.
He acknowledges that he has become a bit obsessed while he is doing his doctorate. He said he works for 16 hours a day for a few weeks. It's hard to find time to cut the lawn and decorate the house, and friends and family have to put up with you talking about dinosaurs all the time.
Every day, he surveys the beach to find dinosaur bones emerging from the cliffs. peak collecting season is winter. The big finds come in when winter storms erode things.
He is working with a German company and a group of people to try to get the Dinosaur Isle museum redeveloped.
Lockwood said he was trying to take over the museum. The Isle of Wight sells dinosaurs. Most people don't know that Europe is home to dinosaurs and early mammals. We need a bigger museum.
He sympathizes with former medical colleagues who are still working on the frontline during the Pandemic and is annoyed by the "lazy GP stereotype" that is sometimes aired in media coverage. He said nothing could be further from the truth. You can see it happening all over the place.
Several doctors sent him a message of thanks for his recent successes. He said that some of the nice tweets were from other doctors. There is a life after medicine.
