A 9-year-old girl discovered a new dinosaur and the new species was named after her.
When Daisy Morris was just 4, she happened to stumble upon the fossilized remains of an unknown animal while walking with her family on the beach in 2009. Morris and her family live near the coast of England's Isle of Wight, which is known as the dinosaur capital of Great Britain, the Daily Mail reports.
"She has a very good eye for tiny little fossils," her mother Sian Morris told BBC. Daisy apparently first began fossil hunting at age 3. "She found these tiny little black bones sticking out of the mud and decided to dig a bit further and scoop them all out," her mother said.
The family thought that she may have found something special, so they took the bones to Martin Simpson, a Southhampton University fossil expert.
"When Daisy and her family brought the fossilized remains to me in April 2009, I knew I was looking at something very special," Simpson told the Daily Mail.
The bones have been looked over for several years by different paleontologists. They were stumped by what it could be and determined that Morris found the fossilized remains of a previously unknown genus and species of a small flying reptile called the pterosaur. Experts believe the remains date back to the Lower Cretaceous period, meaning it could be as old as 115 million years.
For making the find, scientists named the new creature after Daisy herself. The new creature has been dubbed Vectidraco daisymorrisae, the "Dragon from the Isle of Wight."
Simpson believes that if it weren't for Daisy, the fossils would "without doubt have been washed away and destroyed," the Daily Mail reports.
Daisy and her family donated the find to the Natural History Museum and Morris continues on her search for more bones as she has a new interest.
"She's fascinated and we're very proud of her," Sian Morris told the Daily Mail.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
