A 4’11” dinosaur ‘more dangerous than a T Rex’ once terrorised the Isle of Wight

Better late than never, right?

That’s what dinosaur researchers, called palaeontologists, might have thought when they realised they had been sat on a new species of reptile.

Invictibellatrix amberina – or ‘unconquered female warrior’ – was identified from a fossil found on the Isle of Wight more than 100 years ago, according to a paper published yesterday in Royal Society Open Science.

The ancient beast was a megaraptoran, light-footed, feathery carnivore with long, powerful arms tipped with giant claws.

Invictibellatrix prowled Earth during the Early Cretaceous period, about 120million years ago, when there were rainforests on the poles.

Yet Invictibellatrix amberina doesn’t really put the ‘mega’ in megaraptorans; the species was just a metre and a half in height, or as tall as a human.

‘Invictibellatrix would have been three to four metres long,’ said lead author Dr Cassius Morrison, of University College London.

‘It would likely have had feathers and its claws might have been about 10cm to 20cm long.

‘It would have eaten small dinosaurs, lizards and mammals – occupying a similar role in the food chain to the hyena today.’

In other words, unlike the Tyrannosaurus rex it’s closely related to, Invictibellatrix wasn’t an apex predator.

‘But for humans, this dinosaur would have been more dangerous than a T Rex,’ added Dr Morrison.

‘We would have been perfectly sized prey, about a third of their body weight.

‘They definitely would have chased us. A T Rex would not have bothered, as we would have been too small.’

We don’t know much about megaraptors beyond the odd remains that don’t include the bones of their dinner.

And there’s probably more of the latter, as megaraptors’ bones were unusually light and air-filled, so don’t fossilise well.

They stomped around South America, Asia and Australia but none of their remains had been found in Europe.

Yet part of an Invictibellatrix skull was found at the foot of a cliff on the south-west coast of the Isle of Wight.

The fossil was acquired by the Natural History Museum in London in 1924 and has since been ‘sitting inside a drawer’, Dr Morrison said.

Professor Paul Barrett, the study’s senior author from the Natural History Museum, said many dino bones have been dug up on the Isle of Wight.

‘Work like this shows the exceptional value of working with historical museum collections where there are still many discoveries to be made,’ he added.

Researchers took a CT scan of the fossil to compare it with other meat-eating dinos, like tiny-armed tyrannosaurs and the spinosaurs, known for the sail-like spines on their backs.

Yet the team found the skull had an odd, oval hole and an hourglass-shaped crest, something not seen in any other known species of dinosaur.

Mathematical modelling also provided new insight into how megaraptors spread over time.

Fossil scraps suggest they were the great hunters of the early Cretaceous in what is now Asia before moseying to Europe.

Tens of millions of years later, they died out in northern Europe while megaraptors elsewhere grew larger and developed 35cm-long claws.

Researchers aren’t sure why megaraptors went extinct in some places but not others. It’s thought they may have been unable to compete with their younger offshoots, tyrannosaurs, during the late Cretaceous period.

‘Who knows what else is waiting to be discovered,’ added Dr Morrison.

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