On Oct 14, 2026, researchers from UCL and London's Natural History Museum described a new dinosaur, Invictibellatrix amberina, in Royal Society Open Science (Morrison et al.). The fossil, a chunk of the back of a skull from the Isle of Wight, England, reached the museum in 1924 and had been overlooked for study until now.
The number
About 100 years. The fossil entered the collection in 1924 and was named in 2026, 102 years later. The UCL release says "nearly 100 years"; two authors wrote "over 100 years" on Oct 24, 2026.
What was found
- The piece is a braincase, the part of the skull that held the brain. A CT scan (X-ray images a computer combines into a 3D picture) modeled the bone and the hollow inside it.
- Its skull features matched no known dinosaur, so the team named a new species.
- It is a megaraptoran: a two-legged carnivore that attacked with large arms and giant curved claws rather than its jaws. The claws might have been about 10 to 20 cm (4 to 8 inches) long.
- Judging by its closest relatives, it was 3 to 4 meters (10 to 13 feet) long and just over 1.5 meters (5 feet) tall, about as tall as a person. It lived about 120 million years ago.
- Megaraptorans are known mostly from South America, particularly Argentina. This is the first in Europe.
- Invictibellatrix means "unconquered female warrior"; with amberina, "unconquered female warrior of the amber".
What it does not mean
- The size is an estimate judging by relatives: only part of the skull exists. The release says 3 to 4 meters; the authors' article in The Conversation (Oct 24, 2026) says about 5 meters (16 feet).
- The "brain" is a model of the hollow inside the skull, not a preserved brain.
Why it matters
A fossil unstudied for about a century turned out to be the first of its group in Europe. Museum drawers still hold material nobody has examined closely.
Sources: UCL News, Oct 14, 2026, ucl.ac.uk/news/2026/oct/uk-dinosaur-fossil-identified-new-long-clawed-predator; Morrison et al., Royal Society Open Science 13(10), Oct 14, 2026, doi.org/10.1098/rsos.260937, CC BY 4.0; Scherer and Morrison, The Conversation, Oct 24, 2026, via phys.org/news/2026-10-longclawed-british-dinosaur-kind-europe.html; checked Nov 9, 2026.
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