February | 2023 | Knocklyon History Society

Title ‘The Earliest Arrivals’
Speaker: John Dolan
Time: @ 7:45 PM
Location: Iona Pastoral Centre

Brief excerpt from: ‘The Earliest Arrivals/Humans in Offaly’, by John Dolan

“Long before homo sapiens emerged out of Africa dinosaurs roamed across the earth 200 – 145 million years ago. They roamed the European landscape and evidence of their existence can be found in nearly all European countries. Many examples have been found in Britain, mainly in the south. A Sauropod found in Dorset has been dated to 168 – 166 million years old.

During the 1980s four unusual bones were found along the Antrim coastline but were not recognised. They sat in boxes in the National Museum Northern Ireland until 2020 when they were re-examined in an attempt to identify them. Two of the bones were identified as dinosaurs but from two different species. One of them was the leg bone of a two-footed meat-eating Megalosaurus from 166 million years ago, while the second bone came from a four-footed, plant-eating Scelidosaurus from 191 million years ago. It is likely that these animals arrived in Ireland when Ireland and Europe were one land mass”.
Source: offalyhistory.blog