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New dinosaur species discovered from fossil ‘overlooked’ for over 100 years

The tiger-sized predator fills a gap in megaraptoran evolution and suggests the group spread from Asia into Europe, researchers said.

  • University College London researchers identified a century-old Natural History Museum skull as a new megaraptoran species, Invictibellatrix amberina, which prowled the Isle of Wight around 120 million years ago.
  • Found at the foot of an Isle of Wight cliff in 1924 by amateur palaeontologist Reginald Walter Tooley, the fragmented braincase sat in a Natural History Museum drawer for nearly 100 years until researchers re-examined it recently.
  • Dr. Cassius Morrison, a researcher at the University of Leeds, said megaraptorans were "agile hunters capable of chasing down prey" with 10cm to 20cm claws used to hunt small dinosaurs, lizards, and mammals.
  • Invictibellatrix serves as the first European megaraptoran, confirming the group spread globally from Asia into Gondwana before the asteroid strike 66 million years ago. Study co-author Charlie Scherer said the findings "help to uncover the evolution of one of the most mysterious theropod groups."
  • Unlike Tyrannosaurus rex, Invictibellatrix would have viewed humans as "perfectly sized prey," Morrison noted. The researcher called it a "real mystery" that the fossil was overlooked for nearly 100 years, underscoring untapped potential within museum collections.
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50 Articles

Lean Left

A new species of dinosaur, a long-clawed predator the size of a large tiger, has been identified based on a fossil found on the Isle of Wight more than a century ago.

·Belgrade, Serbia
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Lean Right

It is a new species of dinosaur with long claws.Dinosaur belongs to a group of agile carnivores and bipeds called megaraptorans and is the first of this group to have been found in Europe.

·Buenos Aires, Argentina
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The Independent broke the news in London, United Kingdom on Tuesday, October 13, 2026.
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