Europe’s first known megaraptoran was waiting in a museum collection all along. A piece of dinosaur skull acquired by London’s Natural History Museum in 1924 has now been identified as Invictibellatrix amberina, a newly named predator that lived about 120 million years ago.
The UCL-led discovery, announced October 14, adds a European chapter to the history of megaraptorans: two-legged meat-eaters known for powerful arms and long, curved claws. The research is published in Royal Society Open Science.
A century-old fossil gets a new identity
Amateur fossil collector Reginald Walter Tooley found the specimen at the foot of a cliff on the Isle of Wight. It later entered the museum with more than 1,000 specimens from his collection.
Researchers CT-scanned the preserved braincase, built digital models and compared its anatomy with other predatory dinosaurs. A distinctive combination of features, including an oval opening for the spinal cord and an hourglass-shaped crest, supported the new species identification.
That makes the actual fossil worth a close look. The photographs show several views of the same partial braincase, with labels marking anatomical details. This is the small piece of evidence behind the much bigger animal being reconstructed.
What the claws can, and cannot, tell us
Based on its relatives, lead author Cassius Morrison estimates that Invictibellatrix measured roughly three to four meters long and stood a little over 1.5 meters tall. It may have had feathers and claws around 10 to 20 centimeters long. Those are reconstructions from related animals; the specimen described here is a skull fragment, with no preserved hands or feather covering.
A missing stop on the dinosaur map
According to the Natural History Museum’s account, the discovery supports a proposed route in which megaraptorans spread from Asia through Europe and onward to the southern landmass Gondwana. Finding one in Europe provides fossil evidence for a geographical link that had been missing.
The genus name means “unconquered female warrior.” Its arrival in the dinosaur family tree is also a reminder that museum collections can still deliver discoveries more than a century after a fossil reaches the shelves. Sometimes the next addition to your prehistoric bestiary is already in the building.
Sources: UCL and the Natural History Museum, October 14, 2026. Study: Morrison and colleagues, Royal Society Open Science.
The holotype braincase of Invictibellatrix amberina (NHMUK PV R6775), photographed from six angles. Image: Morrison et al. (2026), via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0. Converted from PNG to WebP losslessly; image content unchanged.
.png){kind=link}