An article about British scientists who managed to clone a dinosaur, accompanied by a picture of the baby reptile, has turned out to be a hoax.

The story went viral on Twitter, after it was posted on the website News-Hound.org, which claimed that scientists at Liverpool's John Moore University had made the breakthrough.

The bogus report stated: "The dinosaur, a baby Apatosaurus nicknamed 'Spot' is currently being incubated at the University's College of Veterinary Medicine. The scientists extracted DNA from preserved Apatosaurus fossils, which were on display at the university's museum of natural science. Once the DNA was harvested, scientists injected it into a fertile ostrich womb."

The article was declared a hoax by the conspiracy theory and rumour-debunking website Snopes.

The image of the dinosaur baby is actually of a newborn kangaroo.

"The Newshound article's photograph of the baby dinosaur is not an image of a dinosaur at all; it's a repurposed picture of a baby kangaroo which was originally published by an Australian community group to accompany an article about rescuing injured macropods (kangaroos and wallabies) and is actually an illustration of an unfurred joey (newborn kangaroo)," the website stated.

In addition the article also quoted Dr Gemma Sheridan - a name used in a previous fake News-Hound article about a woman from Liverpool, claimed to be trapped on a desert island for seven years before a Google Earth image helped to find her.