Invictibellatrix amberina is a newly named meat-eating dinosaur from the Isle of Wight, about 120 million years old, and it is the first megaraptoran ever identified in Europe.
The species is known from a single fossil braincase found on a beach near Sudmoor Point and acquired by London’s Natural History Museum in 1924. It sat in storage for about a century until museum paleontologist Paul Barrett recognized its importance in 2020. Researchers led by Cassius Morrison used CT scanning and comparisons with other theropod skulls to place it in the Megaraptora, a group of slender, lightly built predators known for giant hand claws, some over 30 centimeters (1 foot) long. At about 5 meters (16 feet) long and roughly the weight of a large tiger, it is the smallest known megaraptoran. The find suggests the group spread from Asia through Europe and Africa to South America and Australia. The name means “unconquered warrior of the amber.” The study appears in Royal Society Open Science (2026, DOI 10.1098/rsos.260937).
Source: Phys.org (The Conversation), New long-clawed British dinosaur is the first of its kind in Europe
Image: Speculative life restoration of Invictibellatrix amberina by MakairodonX, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.