The Discovery
A forgotten fossil has re-emerged after spending more than a century inside the collections of the Natural History Museum in London. In 2020, palaeontologist Paul Barrett recognized a small fragment of bone as an essential part of a dinosaur skull—the braincase. Museum records revealed that the piece had been found on a beach near Sudmoor Point on the Isle of Wight, off the southern coast of England. Barrett recruited Cassius Morrison, a doctoral student specializing in dinosaur braincases, to help analyze the specimen in detail.
What Scientists Found
The investigation revealed that the roughly 120-million-year-old fossil belonged to a newly identified two-legged, meat-eating theropod named Invictibellatrix amberina. To study the specimen, the researchers compared it with other carnivore skulls and used computed tomography (CT) scanning to inspect the inside of the braincase. The work established several key facts about the predator:
- It is the smallest known member of the Megaraptora group, measuring around 5 meters from head to tail and weighing about as much as a large tiger.
- It represents an early stage of megaraptoran evolution, before members of the family grew into gigantic sizes.
- It shared its island habitat with other meat-eaters, such as Neovenator, Ceratosuchops, and Eotyrannus, and likely fed on small dinosaurs, mammals, lizards, and crocodiles.
Why It Matters
Invictibellatrix is the first megaraptoran ever discovered in Europe. Previously, members of this predatory family were only known from early Cretaceous fossils in Thailand and Japan, as well as later species in South America and Australia. Because these continent-spanning distances were separated by oceans, the existence of Invictibellatrix indicates that megaraptorans likely migrated from Asia to the southern landmasses by traveling through Europe and Africa. The finding also suggests that more undiscovered megaraptoran fossils may still be resting in Africa, Antarctica, or overlooked inside museum cabinets.
Source: dinosaur fossil discovery - BingNews · Published October 20, 2026 · Photo by Bruno Martins on Unsplash