(CNN) The so-called Frankenstein dinosaur is the missing link connecting plant-eating dinosaurs such as the Stegosaurus to a group including carnivorous ones such as the Tyrannosaurus rex, scientists have suggested.

The vegetarian dinosaur walked the Earth around 150 million years ago and is officially known as the Chilesaurus. It initially confused scientists because of its strange physical characteristics, apparently drawn from two groups of dinosaurs that were thought to be separate.

Originally discovered in South America, the Chilesaurus has the head of a carnivore but flat teeth suited to grinding plants.

"Chilesaurus almost looks like it was stitched together from different animals, which is why it baffled everybody," said Matthew Baron, a Ph.D. student in the University of Cambridge's department of earth sciences and joint first author of a new study on the dinosaur published Wednesday.

The researchers, from Cambridge and London's Natural History Museum, analyzed more than 450 anatomical characteristics of early dinosaurs to find the right place for the Chilesaurus in the dinosaur family tree.

Read More</s>The legendary Bigfoot is often described as the "missing link" between apes and man, but the Chilesaurus has an edge on Bigfoot: it is the missing link between herbivore dinosaurs and their carnivorous brethren.

In a new study done by the University of Cambridge, Chilesaurus, which lived 150 million years ago, scientists now believe the dinosaur is an early member of the "Ornithischia," a "bird-hipped" group that includes dinosaurs such as the Stegosaurus and Iguanadon.

Researchers found that the Chilesaurus has the same inverted hip structure of the Ornithischia group, which aids in complex digestive systems. But it also lacks the beak Ornithischia dinosaurs used for eating.

NEWFOUND DINOSAUR LOOKS LIKE THE CREEPY LOVE CHILD OF A TURKEY AND AN OSTRICH

“Chilesaurus almost looks like it was stitched together from different animals, which is why it baffled everybody,” said Matthew Baron, a doctoral student in Cambridge University's Department of Earth Sciences and the paper’s joint first author, in a statement.

The dino, which has been described as ‘Frankenstein’s monster,’ confused scientists because it had a head that "resembles that of a carnivore, but it has flat teeth for grinding up plant matter," according to a press release, discussing the findings.

The researchers analyzed more than 450 anatomical characteristics of early dinosaurs to come up with the placement.

Chilesaurus originally belonged to the group Theropoda, ‘lizard-hipped’ group of dinosaurs which includes Tyrannosaurus rex.

"Before this, there were no transitional specimens – we didn’t know what order these characteristics evolved in,” Baron added. “This shows that in bird-hipped dinosaurs, the gut evolved first, and the jaws evolved later – it fills the gap quite nicely.”

“Chilesaurus is one of the most puzzling and intriguing dinosaurs ever discovered,” said co-author Professor Paul Barrett of the Natural History Museum in London. “Its weird mix of features places it in a key position in dinosaur evolution and helps to show how some of the really big splits between the major groups might have come about.”

The latest findings were published in the journal Biology Letters.</s>A 'Frankenstein's monster' dinosaur may be the missing link between two major dinosaur groups - plant eaters and predators such as T-rex.

The bizarre dinosaur, called the Chilesaurus, was vicious like a raptor but was in fact a vegetarian.

In a new study, researchers suggest that some Chilesaurus started eating meat while others started eating plants, leading to a split between the two groups.

The findings have allowed experts to correctly place the creature in the dinosaur family tree and map the evolution of certain traits.

Chilesaurus, which was discovered in southern Chile, was first described in 2015.

It lived during the Late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago, and has an odd collection of physical characteristics, which made it difficult to classify.

For example, its head resembles that of a carnivore, but it has flat teeth for grinding up plant matter.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Natural History Museum now suggest Chilesaurus shows how the divide between two major dinosaur groups may have happened.

'Chilesaurus almost looks like it was stitched together from different animals, which is why it baffled everybody,' said Matthew Baron, a PhD student in Cambridge's Department of Earth Sciences and the paper's joint first author.

Earlier research suggested that this peculiar dinosaur belonging to the group Theropoda - the 'lizard-hipped' group of dinosaurs that includes Tyrannosaurus.

But the new study suggests that it was probably a very early member of a completely different group, called Ornithischia.

This shuffling of the dinosaur family tree has major implications for understanding the origins of Ornithischia - the 'bird-hipped' group of dinosaurs that includes Stegosaurus, Triceratops and Iguanodon.

The bird-hipped dinosaurs have several common physical traits: the two most notable of these are an inverted, bird-like hip structure and a beak-like structure for eating.

The inverted hips allowed for bigger, more complex digestive systems, which in turn allowed larger plant-eaters to evolve.

While Chilesaurus has a bird-like hip structure, and has flat teeth for grinding up plants, it does not possess the distinctive 'beak' of many other bird-hipped dinosaurs, which is what makes it such an important find.

'Before this, there were no transitional specimens – we didn't know what order these characteristics evolved in,' said Mr Baron.

'This shows that in bird-hipped dinosaurs, the gut evolved first, and the jaws evolved later – it fills the gap quite nicely', he said.

'Chilesaurus is one of the most puzzling and intriguing dinosaurs ever discovered,' said co-author Professor Paul Barrett of the Natural History Museum.

'Its weird mix of features places it in a key position in dinosaur evolution and helps to show how some of the really big splits between the major groups might have come about.'

'There was a split in the dinosaur family tree, and the two branches took different evolutionary directions,' said Dr Baron.

'This seems to have happened because of change in diet for Chilesaurus. It seems it became more advantageous for some of the meat eating dinosaurs to start eating plants, possibly even out of necessity.'

Earlier this year, the same group of researchers argued that dinosaur family groupings need to be rearranged, re-defined and re-named.

In a study published in Nature, the researchers suggested that bird-hipped dinosaurs and lizard-hipped dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus evolved from a common ancestor, potentially overturning more than a century of theory about the evolutionary history of dinosaurs.

Although their dataset has already thrown up some surprising results, the researchers say that as it currently analyses only early dinosaurs, there are probably many more surprises about dinosaur evolution to be found, once characteristics of later dinosaurs are added.</s>An oddball, vegetarian dinosaur with the silhouette of a flesh-ripping velociraptor, whose fossilised remains were unearthed in southern Chile 13 years ago, is a missing link in dino evolution, researchers said Wednesday.

A revised assessment of the kangaroo-sized Chilesaurus, reported in the journal Biology Letters, bolsters a theory unveiled earlier this year that threatens to upend a long-standing classification of all dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs were the monarchs of Earth for 160 million years until a space rock collided with the planet 65.5 million years ago and wiped out those confined to land.

The survivors, which could fly, are the direct ancestor of today's birds.

"Chilesaurus genuinely helps fill an evolutionary gap between two big dinosaur groups," said co-author Paul Barrett, president of Britain's Palaeontographical Society and a researcher at the Natural History Museum.

When first presented to the world in 2015, Chilesaurus -- despite its penchant for plants -- was lumped together with theropods, the suborder of meat-eating dinos that not only includes fleet-footed velociraptors but Tyrannosaurus rex, the ultimate carnivore.

Experts acknowledged at the time, however, that it was an awkward fit. One described the beast as "the most bizarre dinosaur ever found."

An upright posture, powerful hind legs and foreshortened front limbs were all reminiscent of theropods.

But an inverted, bird-like hip structure and flattened, leaf-shaped teeth -- proof of an exclusively vegetal diet -- suggested that it also shared traits with another major suborder, the Ornithischia.

Well-known ornithischians include Triceratops and the three-tonne Stegosaurus, which boasted large armoured plates along its spine and a brain the size of a walnut.

"Chilesaurus initially looked like an earlier offshoot of the theropod line, but it seemed suspicious that it had all these adaptations for eating plants," Barrett told AFP.

It lived about 150 million years ago, far earlier than the handful of theropods known to have turned away from meat, he pointed out.

To verify Chilesaurus' place in the dino family tree, Barrett and Matthew Baron of the University of Cambridge analysed more than 450 anatomical features of early dinosaurs.

"We realised that it was not a strange, early plant-eating theropod, but rather a strange plant-eating animal that was an offshoot of this other group, Ornithischia," Barrett said.

Reassigning Chilesaurus to a new family tree might seem like something only a dino lover could find exciting.

But the new affiliation has major implications.

For most of the last century, experts have agreed that theropods were more closely related to a third major evolutionary branch, the Sauropods, that included long-necked beasts such as Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus.

But the neither-fish-nor-foul Chilesaurus shows that the fearsome killers under the theropod umbrella shared, in fact, a greater affinity with the docile Ornithischia menagerie.

This was the bold theory that Baron and Barrett, along with other colleagues, proposed in a landmark study published last March in the journal Nature.

"Our reorganisation was putting Ornithischia and theropods much closer together, and this new animal helps cement that relationship," Barrett explained.

"Chilesaurus gives us more confidence that this rearrangement was correct because it has a combination of features found in those two groups."

The first dinosaur emerged some 228 million years ago. The new findings support the idea that theropods and ornithischians shared a common ancestor as early as 225 million years ago, not long after the dino saga began.

Ornithischia thrived for more than 100 million years, but dead-ended when the rogue rock smashed into what, today, is the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico.

The impact probably created a massive firestorm followed by a decades-long winter that destroyed vegetation, the starting point in the dinosaurs' food chain.

Most theropods were wiped out too, although the forerunners of modern birds persevered.</s>A bizarre dinosaur which looked like a raptor but was, in fact, a vegetarian may be the ‘missing link’ between plant-eating dinosaurs and carnivores such as the dreaded Tyrannosaurus rex, scientists say. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Natural History Museum in the UK used a comprehensive dataset to analyse over 450 anatomical characteristics of early dinosaurs and correctly placed the creature, known as Chilesaurus, in the dinosaur family tree. The results, published in the journal Biology Letters, suggest that Chilesaurus effectively fills a large gap between two of the major dinosaur groups, and shows how the divide between them may have happened.Chilesaurus, which was discovered in southern Chile, was first described in 2015. It lived during the Late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago, and has an odd collection of physical characteristics, which made it difficult to classify.

For example, its head resembles that of a carnivore, but it has flat teeth for grinding up plant matter. “Chilesaurus almost looks like it was stitched together from different animals, which is why it baffled everybody,” said Matthew Baron, a Ph.D. student at Cambridge. Earlier research suggested that this peculiar dinosaur belonging to the group Theropoda, the ‘lizard-hipped’ group of dinosaurs that includes Tyrannosaurus, but the new study suggests that it was probably a very early member of a completely different group, called Ornithischia. This shuffling of the dinosaur family tree has major implications for understanding the origins of Ornithischia, the ‘bird-hipped’ group of dinosaurs that includes Stegosaurus, Triceratops, and Iguanodon.

The bird-hipped dinosaurs have several common physical traits: the two most notable of these are an inverted, bird- like hip structure and a beak-like structure for eating. The inverted hips allowed for bigger, more complex digestive systems, which in turn allowed larger plant-eaters to evolve, researchers said. While Chilesaurus has a bird-like hip structure and has flat teeth for grinding up plants, it does not possess the distinctive ‘beak’ of many other bird-hipped dinosaurs, which is what makes it such an important find, they said. “Before this, there were no transitional specimens – we did not know what order these characteristics evolved in,” said Baron.

“This shows that in bird-hipped dinosaurs, the gut evolved first, and the jaws evolved later – it fills the gap quite nicely,” he said. “Chilesaurus is one of the most puzzling and intriguing dinosaurs ever discovered,” said Professor Paul Barrett of the Natural History Museum. “Its weird mix of features places it in a key position in dinosaur evolution and helps to show how some of the really big splits between the major groups might have come about,” said Paul.</s>As A-level students across the nation nervously await their results today (Thursday, August 17), the News helps with some popular questions asked about Cambridge University on Google.

Popular questions asked about the university include when it was founded, how much is it to study at Cambridge, how many students there are, and how to apply for Cambridge University.

Believe it or not - other popular Google questions include: "Where is Cambridge University?" and "Is Cambridge University in London?" Well, we can shed light on this: you guessed it, the university is based in Cambridge - and not London as some may believe.

What students need to score on their A-levels for top marks in 2017

Just a few of those popular questions are answered below (you can thank us later).

The University of Cambridge was founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by King Henry III in 1231.

Cambridge is well known as the world's third-oldest surviving university. It grew out of an association of scholars who left the University of Oxford after a dispute with the townspeople.

How much is Cambridge University?

Contrary to what some people may think, Cambridge University costs no more than any other university.

Cambridge tuition fees for home fee status students starting their first undergraduate degree this year is £9,250 for all courses.

All these students are urged to expect their tuition fees to rise in subsequent years, in line with inflation.

How many students are at Cambridge University?

Last year, the total enrolment for the University of Cambridge stood at 19,672 students – with figures expected to be largely the same this year.

How do you get into/how do you apply for Cambridge University?

If you want to apply to Cambridge University, you do so through UCAS.

However, at Cambridge the process starts earlier to allow time for all of the application information to be gathered and considered. A handy section here will help guide you through the application process.

A-Level results 2017: Find out everything you need to know

If you want to study at Cambridge University this year – sadly UCAS applications had to be submitted by October last year (2016).

But if you want to try next year - shortly after submitting the UCAS application, you will be requested (via email) to complete the Supplementary Application Questionnaire (SAQ) – a few extra questions requesting information not included in your UCAS application which the university find helpful.

If living/attending school/college outside the EU and/or applying for an Organ Scholarship (for those who want to play the organ at a college chapel), applicants need to submit the Cambridge Online Preliminary Application (COPA).

Where to celebrate A-level results day in Cambridge

Most applicants are required to take a written admission assessment, either pre-interview or at interview.

Everyone with a realistic chance of being offered a place is invited to attend an interview. That’s around 75 per cent of applicants each year.

Students are advised on whether they have been successful in gaining a place the January after their application.

What does Cambridge University specialise in?

The university offers 30 undergraduate courses, covering more than 65 subject areas.

You can find out whether the subject you want to study is listed by clicking here .</s>A dinosaur we've only known about for a couple of years could be the missing link between plant-eating dinosaurs and members of the theropod group, including carnivores like Tyrannosaurus Rex and Velociraptor.

That's based on a new analysis of the Chilesaurus dinosaur – first identified in 2015 from a fossil find in Chile, it's intrigued researchers ever since with its odd mix of physical characteristics.

Not only does Chilesaurus bridge a rather large gap between the two biggest dinosaur groups, it also gives us clues about how that gap might have been created, according to the team from the University of Cambridge and the Natural History Museum in the UK.

"Chilesaurus is one of the most puzzling and intriguing dinosaurs ever discovered," says one of the researchers, Paul Barrett of the Natural History Museum.

"Its weird mix of features places it in a key position in dinosaur evolution and helps to show how some of the really big splits between the major groups might have come about."

The dinosaur family tree may need rewriting. Credit: University of Cambridge

The dinosaur in question has a small skull, long neck, and a body measuring about 3 metres (or 10 feet). It's thought to have lived about 145 million years ago during the Jurassic Period.

The team analysed more than 450 anatomical characteristics of Chilesaurus to try and place it in the right part of the dinosaur family tree.

The two major dinosaur groups that Chilesaurus could bridge are the 'lizard-hipped' Theropoda group, including Tyrannosaurus rex, and the 'bird-hipped' Ornithischia group, including the likes of Triceratops.

It was originally thought that Chilesaurus belonged in the lizard-hipped group, but the new study suggests it's a very early member of the bird-hipped group instead.

Chilesaurus has inverted, bird-like hips, but it doesn't have the distinctive, bird-like beak for eating like all the other Ornithischia dinosaurs, such as Stegosaurus or Iguanodon, and that's what makes it so important to paleontologists.

And while its head resembles that of a carnivore, it has flat teeth best suited to grinding up plants. It's a mixture of mysteries.

"There was a split in the dinosaur family tree, and the two branches took different evolutionary directions," says one of the team, Matthew Baron from the University of Cambridge.

"This seems to have happened because of change in diet for Chilesaurus. It seems it became more advantageous for some of the meat-eating dinosaurs to start eating plants, possibly even out of necessity."

If Chilesaurus really is an ornithopod rather than a theropod, then it can help us understand how this group of dinosaurs developed. Based on the team's analysis, it looks like the gut of this dinosaur evolved before the jaw, for example.

And it means ornithopods and theropods are more closely related in the dinosaur family tree than previously thought. In other words, they had common ancestors, rather than evolving separately, and Chilesaurus is one of the earliest keys to that.

In the end it turns out that a dinosaur that had been seen as something of a Frankenstein's monster is actually one of the most significant we've identified so far.

"Chilesaurus almost looks like it was stitched together from different animals, which is why it baffled everybody," adds Baron.

The findings have been published in Biology Letters.</s>A bizarre-looking dinosaur discovered by a young boy in Chile may be the missing link showing how members of one major dinosaur lineage evolved into a completely new dinosaur group, a new study finds.

Researchers in the United Kingdom say the species, dubbed Chilesaurus diegosuarezi, explains how some theropods, mostly meat-eating, bipedal dinosaurs, evolved into the herbivorous, long-necked ornithischians.

Previously, it was unclear how the "ornithischian group just suddenly appeared and became this well-adapted herbivorous group," said the study's co-lead researcher, Matthew Baron, a doctoral student of paleontology at the University of Cambridge in England. "There was no intermediate step. This is the first one we've found." [See Photos of the Missing Link, Chilesaurus diegosuarezi]

If future research confirms this finding, this would make Chilesaurus the earliest member of Ornithischia, a group that includes the armored dinosaurs, such as Stegosaurus and Ankylosaurus, as well as horned dinosaurs, such as Triceratops.

But not everyone is on board with this interpretation. Rather, more "grunt work" is needed to determine Chilesaurus' true identity, said Thomas Carr, an associate professor of biology at Carthage College in Wisconsin and a vertebrate paleontologist. Carr was not involved in the study.

This isn't the first time Chilesaurus has turned heads. In 2010, 7-year-old Diego Suárez, the son of two geologists, found the 145-million-year-old beast in southern Chile's Toqui Formation.

After Diego found the first specimen, excavations in Chile yielded more than a dozen Chilesaurus individuals, including four complete skeletons that ranged from turkey-size young dinosaurs to nearly 10-foot-long (3 meters) adult dinosaurs. But despite the abundance of fossils, Chilesaurus' anatomy was a real head-scratcher.

The creature looked like a mixture of lineages. It had the long neck, small skull and clunky feet of a sauropodomorph (a group of long-necked, herbivorous dinosaurs with lizard-like hips); the beak, teeth and pubic bone of an herbivorous, bird-hipped ornithischian; and the bipedal stance, robust forelimbs and ilium (the upper part of the pelvic bone) of a meat-eating theropod.

To determine where Chilesaurus fit in the dinosaur family tree, the South American researchers looked at four data sets to compare the dinosaur's features with those of theropods, mainly from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, as well as with sauropodomorphs. In the end, they deemed Chilesaurus an enigmatic plant-eating theropod, a relative of Tyrannosaurus rex and the fearsome Velociraptor, according to a 2015 study published in the journal Nature.

However, not everyone was satisfied with Chilesaurus' classification as a theropod. Earlier this year, Baron and his colleagues stunned dinosaur researchers when they published a study revising the dinosaur family tree. According to their analyses, theropods and ornithischians were more closely related than previously thought.

Baron wanted to see where Chilesaurus fit on the new family tree. So he reached out to Fernando Novas, a paleontologist at the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who was the lead researcher on the 2015 Nature study.

Novas provided data on Chilesaurus to Baron and study co-lead researcher Paul Barrett, a paleobiologist at the Natural History Museum in London. Once Baron and Barrett had Chilesaurus' information, they plugged it into their enormous data set, which has data on the earliest dinosaurs on record. [Gory Guts: Photos of a T. Rex Autopsy]

"[Chilesaurus] came out as basically the first diverging member of one of the major groups, which is a position that had never been suggested before," Baron told Live Science. "It was a bit of a surprise."

However, evolution is a long, complicated process. There are ornithischians that are older than the Late Jurassic Chilesaurus, but they likely evolved from earlier theropods, Baron said. The fossils of these older, transitional creatures have yet to be found, he said.

"More and more evidence is now appearing that the ornithischian group might just be entirely Jurassic and Cretaceous, that they weren't present in the first period of dinosaur history [the Triassic]," he said.

It's difficult to say which interpretation is correct — that is, whether Chilesaurus is a theropod or an early member of Ornithischia, Carr said.

"Having read these works side by side, I can understand why the [2015 researchers] thought what they thought: The evidence is convincing that it's a theropod," Carr told Live Science. "[But] this new paper is just as convincing that it's an ornithischian."

There's only one way out of this conundrum, Carr said: "All of these data sets have to be combined" so researchers can determine, once and for all, where Chilesaurus fits — a task that can't be completed unless all of the relevant and available data from the Mesozoic is used.

Even though the family trees are different, it's possible to combine the data sets of the early dinosaurs that Baron used and the Sauropodomorpha and later theropod data sets that Novas and his colleagues used, Carr noted.

"It does take a lot of work, but in the end, what you get is a data set that includes all of the relevant characters from all of the relevant analyses," he said. Only then can researchers "get the single truth, the historical truth of the universe as it happened," Carr said.

Baron accepted the critique in stride. "That's genius because that's exactly what we need to do," Baron said. "And that's exactly what I am doing at the [moment]."

Combining data sets is arduous work and could take four or five years to complete, Baron said. But the end result would shine a light on dinosaur evolution, which is a valuable step forward because "we actually are finding we know less and less about dinosaur evolution," Baron said. [Photos: Newfound Tyrannosaur Had Nearly 3-Inch-Long Teeth]

If that's the case, then the discussion on Chilesaurus' relationships has just begun, Novas told Live Science. "However, I welcome the novel interpretation by Baron and Barrett, because it promotes a necessary debate on poorly known aspects of dinosaur evolution as a whole," Novas said.

The new study was published online today (Aug. 16) in the journal Biology Letters.</s>A missing link between plant-eating dinosaurs and meat-eaters such as the Tyrannosaurus rex may have been found, suggests a new study from the University of Cambridge and the Natural History Museum.

After analyzing more than 450 anatomical characteristics of early dinosaurs, the researchers found that Chilesaurus — first described in 2015 — fills the gap between the two groups.

Chilesaurus, which lived 150 million years ago in the Late Jurassic Period, was a puzzling dinosaur that looked like a meat-eating raptor, yet was a herbivore.

"It was so mysterious," Matt Baron, lead author and a PhD student from Cambridge University, told CBC News. "When it was first published in 2015 it really caused a stir, because it was so unusual, a Frankenstein dinosaur. It was made up of such a weird combination of features."

The head of the Chilesaurus resembles that of a carnivore. However, its hip structure was more like Ornithischia (which means "bird-hipped" in Greek). It also had flat teeth for grinding plant material. Making things more puzzling, it had short forelimbs like the allosaurus, a carnivore. However, it lacked claws and instead had stump-like fingers.

"Most of the time with fossils and particular dinosaurs, you can look at bones from the animal and there are certain features of the bone that you can look at and say, 'This belongs to this group because it has this and this,'" Baron said. "With Chilesaurus, if you were to pick up any bone from its body and look at it individually, you'd be forgiven for thinking the bones belonged to a whole range of animals.

"It looked like it had been stitched together from lots of different animals. It was baffling. It was really weird," Baron said.

Baron was part of a team that sought to reclassify all dinosaurs earlier this year in an effort to account for the advances and discoveries made since the first dinosaur family tree was laid out in 1888. It was this project that led to the findings on Chilesaurus.

Chilesaurus possessed both carnivorous and herbivorous dinosaur traits, Baron said, because it was adapting to a changing planet, one that was developing lush green landscapes with plenty of plants to consume.

A body that digests plant matter is vastly different from one that needs to digest meat, Baron said. One key difference is a larger gut, a reason for wider hips.

Baron said that the findings aren't just a window on the past, but also help us to better understand how animals adapt to a changing world.

"We can learn a lot from the way in which they adapted and changed to a changing environment," Baron said. "Given the Earth is changing so much right now, it's good to have things in the fossil record that we can look at and can say, 'Oh, well look: this is one of the ways in which life responded to this change."

Baron acknowledged that there's likely to be pushback from the researchers' findings. Fernando Novas, who first described Chilesaurus in 2015, has expressed some concerns.

In an email statement about the findings, Novas said that Baron and his co-author Paul Barrett overlook strong similarities the dinosaur shares with meat-eating Theropods, including various bone structures.

"I guess the discussion on Chilesaurus relationships [has] just begun, and the years to come will testify fluctuating interpretations on the early dinosaur diversification." he said. "However, I welcome the novel interpretation by Baron and Barrett, because it promotes a necessary debate on poorly known aspects of dinosaur evolution as a whole."
• This newly discovered armoured dinosaur had to hide from bigger, meaner</s>Cambridge is famous for its bright minds, beautiful buildings and punting and but what about its accent?

In the light of a recent survey which voted Cambridge the third sexiest accent in England, Cambridge folk have been discussing whether Cantabrigians have any kind of distinctive accent.

Historically a Cambridge accent is meant to combine estuary English, East Anglian English and Queen's English although over time and with the influx of students, it has diminished.

Because we just sound like any other southerner right? There is NO way anyone could differentiate between someone from London or someone from Cambridge. Right?

Not according to the poll conducted by website Lovin Manchester which unsurprisingly voted the Mancunian accent as the sexiest in Britain, London came in second and Cambridge in third.

News readers are divided on whether Cambridge still has a distinctive accent. Some say there is no such thing as a Cambridge accent and others dispute claim there is a clear distinction between Cambridge and the rest of the country.

The results of our poll suggested that the majority of readers believed there is no such thing as a Cambridge accent, with 57 per cent of voters saying "No! It's just a generic southern accent".

Only 16 per cent of people polled think Cambridge has it's own accent, and agree it is wildly sexy.

The remaining 27 per cent of voters said there is definitely "some sort" of Cambridge accent, but they are not overly sure what it is.

Comments from readers were equally divided. Is it posh, does it have a Fenland twang, or is it simply non existent?

Nadine Wierny said: "There is a Cambridge accent, I didn't realise until I moved to Scotland. I got used to people speaking here, my accent is a little weird now. My family came up to visit and when they started talking, I was like: 'That's such a Cambridge accent'. Some people think it's posh but it's really not."

Speaking from experience once more, Hugo Rainey said: "I checked into a campsite in the south of France a quarter of a century ago. Afterwards, the guy behind me in the queue says: 'Scuse me, you from Cambridge?' I checked my T-shirt to see what it said but it was blank. I said 'yes' and asked how he knew and he replied: 'Recognised yer accent.' I saw him later back in town that autumn drinking in the old Cambridge Arms.

"I agree the only place you can hear the local accent much is out on the Essex-Suffolk border although even that is a bit more sing-song than the Cambridge accent (or more like the 'Caimbridge accen')."

Linda Ann-Locking thinks the Cambridge accent is nothing like a London accent: "Lived in south Cambridge for around 34 years. [Went to] school in Cambridge, college there, worked there lived in Cambridge itself aswell, yet I now live in Durham and we're forever being asked if we come from London. We have nothing anywhere close to a London accent."

Whereas Paul Webb thinks we're merely mocking London.

He said: "Born and raised in Cambridge. I lived in North London. We're mockneys..."

Sandra Stops doesn't think there is such a thing as a Cambridge accent.

"It doesn't have an accent! Having moved away after 46 years no-one can guess where we are from," she said.

Donk Dogget said: "There is for me a distinct Cambridge town accent which seems to also be the south Cambridge accent. It is to my ear like a posh, better pronounced form of cleaner cockney accent. I think partly influenced by London, with a bit of Essex for some who I can only gather watch too much Towie. As you move into north Cambs it is more Dennis of grunty fen, a more Cambridgeshire accent. Longer elocution and more rolling in note."

And Mark Sawers thinks it is abolutely ridiculous that we weren't voted gold. "Only third???"- we know mate, absolute farce.

Let us know what you think about the Cambridge accent, in the comments section below, or by taking our poll.

You can keep up to date with all the latest news in and around Cambridge by downloading our free app. It is available for the iPhone and iPad from Apple's App Store, or the Android version can be downloaded from Google Play.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge suggest that the Chilesaurus may be the so-called "missing link" between the Stegosaurus and the Tyrannosaurus.