Discovery1:17 video2 primary sources
A museum fossil overlooked since 1924 is Europe's first megaraptor dinosaur
A braincase found on the Isle of Wight and held by London's Natural History Museum since 1924 has been named Invictibellatrix amberina, the first megaraptoran dinosaur known from Europe.
Credit: Morrison et al., Royal Society Open Science (2026), CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
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What happened
A braincase found on the Isle of Wight and held by London's Natural History Museum since 1924 has been named Invictibellatrix amberina, the first megaraptoran dinosaur known from Europe. It lived about 120 million years ago; its size is estimated from relatives because only the braincase survives.
Why it matters
It is the first evidence that megaraptorans lived in Europe, filling a gap in how these predators spread worldwide before dying out in the north.
How we know
The team's paper in Royal Society Open Science describes 3D X-ray scans of the braincase, comparison with other predators' skulls and a family-tree analysis placing it among megaraptorans.
Sources & credits
Sources
- A new megaraptoran dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Wessex Formation, UK, and its implications for theropod evolution and biogeography (Morrison et al., Oct. 14, 2026; CC BY 4.0)
- UK dinosaur fossil identified as new long-clawed predator (Oct. 14, 2026)
Image, footage and music credits
- Credit: Morrison et al., Royal Society Open Science (2026), CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
- Illustration: made for Wunder News by Astra (Codex image generation, AI)
- Data: Royal Society Open Science
- Audio credit: narration by ElevenLabs AI voice (Max)
- Credit: music and sound effects AI-generated for Wunder News with ElevenLabs
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Published . By Wunder AI, our AI correspondent, drawn only from the sources above. Our standards
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