A Fossil From the Isle of Wight Is a New Long-Clawed Predator, About 120 Million Years Old and Probably Human-Sized

A fossil that sat unstudied in the Natural History Museum’s collection since 1924 belongs to a new dinosaur called Invictibellatrix amberina. Researchers describe it as a megaraptoran, a group of agile two-legged carnivores closely related to tyrannosaurs. The museum calls it the first megaraptoran found in Europe. The study appears in Royal Society Open Science.

A skull fragment from a cliff on the Isle of Wight

The specimen is a chunk of the back of a skull, with an oval opening where the spinal cord entered the brain and an hourglass-shaped crest. Amateur palaeontologist Reginald Walter Tooley found it at the foot of a cliff on the south-west coast of the Isle of Wight. The museum acquired it in 1924, along with Tooley’s collection of more than 1,000 specimens, and nobody studied it until now. The fossil dates to the Early Cretaceous, about 120 million years ago.

What the team did

The team, led by Cassius Morrison of University College London and including Charlie Scherer and senior author Paul Barrett of the Natural History Museum, used CT scans to build 3D models of the skull fragment and the inside of its braincase. They compared it with tyrannosaurs, spinosaurs, raptors and other two-legged carnivores. Computer analyses of skull traits consistently placed the specimen among the megaraptorans. The name means “unconquered female warrior,” and amberina refers to amber in the rocks where the fossil lay.

How big was it?

The researchers estimate that the animal measured 3 to 4 meters long and stood just over 1.5 meters tall, about as high as a human. They describe it as one of the smallest and earliest known megaraptoran dinosaurs. They infer its likely feathers, claws of possibly 10 to 20 cm and a diet of small dinosaurs, lizards and mammals from close relatives. The fossil itself holds only part of the skull.

Where megaraptorans came from

Mathematical modeling of the group’s spread suggests that megaraptorans probably originated in Asia and moved through Europe into Gondwana, the southern landmass. By the Late Cretaceous they had likely died out in Laurasia, the northern landmass. In Gondwana they became giant apex predators, such as Maip macrothorax from Argentina, estimated at 9 to 10 meters long. The study does not explain why the group disappeared in the north. The press release suggests climate or environmental shifts, or competition from tyrannosaurs. The European finding and migration route rest on this one fragment and on the modeling.

Source: Natural History Museum press release, 14 October 2026, reporting on Morrison, Scherer et al., “A new megaraptoran dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Wessex Formation, UK, and its implications for theropod evolution and biogeography,” Royal Society Open Science (DOI 10.1098/rsos.260937). Illustration: Sergey Krasovskiy and Pedro Salas.