Dinosaur bones have been discovered in Port Erin.

The surprise discovery was made while the village’s main road is being dug up for a regeneration scheme.

The discovery of the plant eating dinosaur, which apparently roamed the earth 165 million years ago, was reported on Port Erin Commissioners’ Facebook page.

The story has gone viral and has attracted 76,105 hits and 460 shares.

The dinosaur was about three metres long, weighed around 500kg and standing on its upright legs would have been five metres high, said the report. It had an elongated head with large millstone-like teeth to grind its food.

There are plans to display the fossil at the Railway Museum.

The article quotes machine operator Steve Cubbon, aged 24, of Colby, who made the discovery. He said: ’I was just digging into some earth near the new water main outside Port Erin Chippy when I spotted what looked like a bone. I kept gently scraping back the earth and gradually a giant skeleton began to emerge. I was staggered.’

The article provoked several comments unkindly comparing the find to the board of local commissioners, while another quipped the beast was alive when the regeneration scheme began and yet another said they were the bones of the Irish hide and seek champion from 1952.

Dig just a little bit deeper than the depth at which the bones were supposedly discovered and it emerges the report of the dinosaur - dubbed ’Rejenasaurus’ - was written on April 1.