The first thing people think of when talking about a paleontological discovery is that it takes place in the field. Dinosaur fossils gradually emerge after the meticulous use of special instruments. But a group of scientists has just made an important discovery without digging it up, instead searching through stored drawers.
That is how they found the skull of a dinosaur dating back 120 million years that, according to its discoverers, may have been more dangerous to humans than Tyrannosaurus rex. It is called Invictibellatrix amberina, a possibly feathered giant that measured between three and four meters in length and 1.50 meters in height, and probably displayed threatening curved claws of up to 20 centimeters.
More Than a Century Preserved in a Drawer
Part of the specimen had initially been recovered at the foot of a cliff at Sudmoor Point, near Brook, on the southwestern coast of the Isle of Wight, in the United Kingdom. That piece was acquired by the Natural History Museum, London (NHMUK), from Reverend R. W. Hooley in May 1924, reports the scientific journal Royal Society Open Science, which published the research.
Thus, the only known fossil of this species had been preserved in an NHMUK collection for more than a century, without anyone recognizing its true identity. Its recent analysis has not only made it possible to identify a new predator but has also provided a fundamental piece for reconstructing the expansion of some of the most enigmatic carnivorous dinosaurs on the planet.
The research was led by Cassius Morrison, a paleontologist at University College London. It has been established that Invictibellatrix amberina was smaller than Tyrannosaurus rex, which is why Morrison believes that a human being would have had proportions compatible with the potential prey of this dinosaur, whereas an adult T. rex would have been adapted to confront much larger animals.
In statements reported by the NHMUK, the researcher argues that this new predator would have posed a particularly significant danger to our species. However, the comparison of which of the two dinosaurs would have been more dangerous to humans is hypothetical, since humans appeared millions of years after these animals became extinct.
This interpretation does not mean that Invictibellatrix amberina was physically more powerful than a tyrannosaur, nor does it prove that T. rex would necessarily have ignored a person, writes Sergio Parra, a journalist specializing in the subject at National Geographic.
“The comparison refers to each animal’s possible interest in prey the size of a human, not to an experimental measurement of its dangerousness,” Parra specifies. “Both dinosaurs disappeared long before our species appeared, so any encounter belongs exclusively to the realm of scientific reconstruction.”
A Name to Inspire Hope and Strength
In the study led by Morrison, the team of researchers produced three-dimensional reconstructions of the skull and endocast based on micro-computed tomography scans; they described its osteology and neurology and made anatomical comparisons with other theropod skulls (a suborder of saurischian dinosaurs, mainly bipedal and carnivorous, characterized by their hollow bones, feet with three functional toes, and sharp claws) from the Wessex Formation (an important British geological unit from the Early Cretaceous, dating back approximately 145 to 125 million years) and other regions, and incorporated the specimen into two phylogenetic analyses.
Invictibellatrix amberina belonged to the megaraptorans, a group of bipedal carnivorous dinosaurs characterized by their relatively narrow heads and well-developed forelimbs.
According to the publication in the scientific journal Royal Society Open Science, the researchers explain that the generic name Invictibellatrix derives from the Latin words “invictus” (“unconquered”) and “bellatrix” (“female warrior”) and honors the future role of Megaraptora as apex predators in Gondwana, whereas at the beginning of their evolutionary history they were smaller, non-apex predators.
“This name is intended to give hope and strength to all those who are bullied, discriminated against, victimized, and oppressed, so that tomorrow will belong to them and they will not give in to such adversity,” the research states. “The species epithet amberina derives from the amber present in the plant debris beds of the Wessex Formation.”
The discovery demonstrates that historical collections continue to hold important discoveries, said Paul Barrett, a researcher at the Natural History Museum and co-author of the study. In other words, there is a great deal of knowledge in drawers. This raises a question: how many unknown species are still hidden among the millions of fossils collected over the past two centuries?