Our town’s history never fails to throw up surprises. Did you know that Kenilworth has a unique, 275 million-year-old dinosaur fossil, of a species which has been found here and nowhere else? And she’s known as Daisy the Dinosaur.
Don’t believe us? You can see a picture of Daisy’s skull on the Our Warwickshire website here. There’s even a Wikipedia page about Daisy, including a lovely picture of her, as she might once have appeared: ‘Daisy’ on Wikipedia
So, meet Daisy, more properly known as Dasyceps bucklandi, named after paleontologist William Buckland. Here’s how KHAS described the story of Daisy’s discovery, in an article which first appeared in Kenilworth History 2021:
Kenilworth’s Unique Fossil
Within the collections of the Warwickshire Museum there lies what is described as “the skull of Dasyceps bucklandi, a giant salamander-like amphibian, that lived in Warwickshire during the Permian Period, nearly 300 million years ago, found in a sandstone quarry in Kenilworth about 1849. It is the only skull of its kind to have been found anywhere in the country”.
Harry Sunley recorded in Kenilworth – A Chronology that the fossil ‘Daisy’ was found by stonemason Joseph Sturley in his quarry on Villiers Hill in 1843, described as “the size of a bull terrier, and lived 275 million years ago in desert conditions”.
The following report of the discovery has come to light, published in the journal of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1850:
So, there you have it. Perhaps we’re missing a trick, by not selling a lucrative line of Daisy souvenirs!
Read more about Kenilworth’s amazing history in Kenilworth History 2026, which will be available to KHAS members and on sale to non-members in February.