{"id":802871,"date":"2026-10-15T00:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T00:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/802871\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T00:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T00:50:10","slug":"new-species-of-predatory-dinosaur-identified-in-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/802871\/","title":{"rendered":"New Species of Predatory Dinosaur Identified in UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

A fossilized braincase that sat in in the collection of the Natural History Museum in London for a century has been identified as Europe\u2019s first megaraptoran dinosaur, a lineage once thought to have flourished mainly in the southern hemisphere.<\/p>\n

\"Artists\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Artists\u2019 rendition of Invictibellatrix amberina with contemporary fauna in the lower part of the Wessex Formation. Image credit: Sergey Krasovskiy \/ Pedro Salas.<\/p>\n

Named Invictibellatrix amberina, the new species belongs to a group of agile, two-legged carnivores called megaraptorans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The animal roamed Earth during the Early Cretaceous, approximately 120 million years ago.<\/p>\n

Its braincase came from the foot of a cliff at Sudmoor Point, near Brook, on the southwest coast of the Isle of Wight.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was purchased by the Natural History Museum in London from Rev. R. W. Hooley in May 1924,\u201d said University College London paleontologist Cassius Morrison and colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is from the Barremian-aged strata of the Wessex Formation and has never been formally described.\u201d<\/p>\n

Invictibellatrix amberina\u2019s braincase is similar in size to that of Timurlengia<\/a>, a small tyrannosauroid estimated at 200 to 300 kg and no more than 4 m long, so the researchers infer that the new species was of comparable size.<\/p>\n

Other megaraptorans are thought to have reached 6 to 10 m or more and to have weighed over 2,000 kg, which would make Invictibellatrix amberina one of the smallest known members of its group, if not the smallest.<\/p>\n

This supports an idea that megaraptorans evolved their large body size relatively late.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on what we know about its closest relatives, Invictibellatrix would have been 3-4 m long and just over a 1.5 m in height \u2014 about as tall as a human,\u201d Dr. Morrison said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would likely have had feathers and its claws might have been about 10-20 cm long.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would have eaten small dinosaurs, lizards and mammals \u2014 occupying a similar role in the food chain to the hyena today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not the apex predator of its time, but for humans this dinosaur would have been more dangerous than a Tyrannosaurus rex.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would have been perfectly sized prey, about a third of their body weight. They definitely would have chased us. A Tyrannosaurus rex would not have bothered, as we would have been too small.\u201d<\/p>\n

The best-known members of the Megaraptora, such as Megaraptor and Australovenator, come from South America and Australia, and the earliest southern hemisphere fossils are younger than the Isle of Wight animal.<\/p>\n

Invictibellatrix amberina fits a picture in which megaraptorans were spread across much of the world early in the Cretaceous.<\/p>\n

The scientists suggest the group arose in Asia, reached Europe by about 130 million years ago, and later spread through Africa and into the southern continents.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis new species is the first proof we have that megaraptorans were also present in Europe and that they reached Gondwana this way rather than island-hopping further south,\u201d said Charlie Scherer, a Ph.D. student at University College London.<\/p>\n

A paper describing the discovery was published today<\/a> in the journal Royal Society Open Science.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

Cassius Morrison et al. 2026. A new megaraptoran dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Wessex Formation, UK, and its implications for theropod evolution and biogeography. R. Soc. Open Sci 13 (10): 260937; doi: 10.1098\/rsos.260937<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fossilized braincase that sat in in the collection of the Natural History Museum in London for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":802872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[19472,2927,591,4390,2928,59,57,58,263683,263684,28568,72267,72268,50,19515,56,54,55,263685],"class_list":["post-802871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-cretaceous","tag-dinosaur","tag-europe","tag-evolution","tag-fossil","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-invictibellatrix","tag-invictibellatrix-amberina","tag-isle-of-wight","tag-megaraptora","tag-megaraptoridae","tag-news","tag-theropod","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wessex-formation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/802872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}