A newly-identified dinosaur from the Late Triassic of Wales has turned out to be hiding in plain sight. The fossil, discovered in 1899 and displayed for years in the National Museum of Wales, has only now been correctly recognised thanks to modern imaging technology unavailable to earlier researchers.
Originally described by Edwin Tully Newton in 1899 as Zanclodon cambrensis, the specimen has now been reclassified by a team of palaeontologists led by Owain Evans of Bristol University. Since the name Zanclodon is no longer used for early reptiles, the team have given it a new name: Newtonsaurus.
As always, discoveries like this present a problem for creationists. Fossils of species that lived tens or even hundreds of millions of years ago sit uneasily with their narrative that all life was magically created just a few thousand years ago. To preserve that story, they are forced into feats of mental gymnastics — whether by bearing false witness against scientists, rejecting well-established dating techniques, or simply dismissing the evidence outright as “wrong.”
The rocks, however, are not so easily ignored. Unlike ancient manuscripts, said to have been dictated by a god to prophets and accepted only on faith, the fossil record is physical, testable, and open to constant re-examination. Evidence can be checked, rechecked, and reassessed as methods improve — something faith alone cannot provide.
The Rocks that Held Newtonsaurus.The reassessment of this fossil is reported in the Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, and is also described in a University of Bristol press release.The fossil of Newtonsaurus cambrensis was found in the Cotham Member of the Lilstock Formation, part of the Penarth Group, a sequence of Late Triassic rocks (about 201–205 million years old).Reconstruction of Newtonsaurus cambrensis in its natural settingAI-generated (ChatGPT 5)
- Penarth Group - A set of mudstones, limestones, and sandstones deposited at the very end of the Triassic, just before the Jurassic. These rocks are well exposed around the Bristol Channel and South Wales.
- Lilstock Formation - The uppermost part of the Penarth Group, mostly limestones and shales, laid down in shallow coastal lagoons and tidal flats.
- Cotham Member - A distinctive layer within the Lilstock Formation, famous for its thinly bedded, patterned limestone sometimes called Cotham Marble (used decoratively in buildings). This unit represents quiet-water conditions in a shallow sea or coastal lagoon, where fine sediments settled slowly on the seabed.
These deposits formed during a time of major environmental change, when rising sea levels were flooding low-lying land across what is now Britain. The calm, lime-rich waters allowed the preservation of delicate fossils, including plants, fish, and reptiles like Newtonsaurus.
New dinosaur from Wales identified in museum drawer
Paleontologists at the University of Bristol have officially identified a new species of dinosaur from Triassic fossil beds in South Wales, near Penarth – more than 125 years after the specimen was initially reported.
Using modern digital scanning techniques the researchers were able to shed new light on the fossil jawbone, which has been known since 1899 and been on display in the National Museum of Wales for many years, but was not correctly identified until now.
The fossil consists of natural moulds of the jawbone in the rock and all the original bone has disappeared. So, using photo scanning, palaeontology student Owain Evans was able to make a perfect 3D digital reconstruction to enable detailed study.
This specimen has been referred to many times in scientific papers, but had yet to be successfully identified – we were not even sure whether it was dinosaur. It was named Zanclodon cambrensis by Edwin Tully Newton in 1899, but we knew the name Zanclodon had been abandoned as referring to a broad variety of early reptiles. Therefore, we name it after Newton, calling it Newtonsaurus. It is different from all other dinosaurs from around that time, and requires a distinctive name.
Owain Evans, lead author
School of Earth Sciences
University of Bristol
Bristol, UK.
The natural moulds of the inner and outer faces of the jawbone show amazing detail – every groove, ridge, tooth, and even the serrations along the edges of the teeth. We decided to use digital photography to make a 3D model. We began by surface scanning the fossil using photogrammetry. Once we had our digital scan, we then inverted it – essentially giving us a digital negative of the mould. It was then a simple case of fusing the two sides together and analysing the anatomy from there. The digital reconstruction we have extracted from the specimen gives a much better idea of what the original structure of the bone would have looked like.
Professor Michael Benton, senior author
School of Earth Sciences
University of Bristol
Bristol, UK.
Now that the fossil could be studied, the team was able to use its anatomy to piece together its position in the reptile family tree – and most crucially – whether it was a dinosaur or not.We can now confirm that this specimen very likely belonged to a large predatory theropod dinosaur, that roamed the shores of South Wales during the latest Triassic. It has some definite unique dinosaur features in the emplacement of the teeth, and it is a theropod - a predatory, flesh-eating dinosaur. Otherwise, it sits near the origins of both major divisions of Theropoda, the Coelophysoidea and the Averostra. Most unexpected is the size of the animal. The preserved jawbone is 28 cm long, and that is just the front half, so originally the jawbone was 60 cm long, corresponding to a dinosaur with a body length of 5–7 metres. This is unusually large for a Triassic theropod, most of which were half the size or smaller.
Owain Evans.
These historical specimens are vitally important in palaeontology and often yield new and exciting results – even if they have been sitting in collections for years. The Victorians were fascinated by the fossil record and prospected all across the UK for fossils. On top of this, the re-description of Newtonsaurus cambrensis once again highlights the significance of Wales in palaeontological research. These Triassic beds are rare worldwide, and yet there are several across Wales. There might very well be another dinosaur waiting to be discovered.
Cindy Howells, co-author
National Museum Cardiff
Cardiff, UK.
Publication:
Abstract
A large jaw of a predatory archosaur from the latest Triassic of South Wales, named Zanclodon cambrensis, has long intrigued vertebrate palaeontologists. Could it be the oldest large theropod dinosaur? Here we reanalyse the specimen based on a new 3D digital reconstruction. We confirm first that it is indeed latest Triassic in age, most likely extracted from sandstones of the Cotham Member of the Lilstock Formation (Penarth Group, Rhaetian). Anatomically it shows features of theropod dinosaurs rather than other large non-dinosaurian predatory archosaurs of the Triassic. It shares general characteristics with European coelophysoids of similar age such as Liliensternus and Dracoraptor but is considerably larger. It is not a megalosauroid, as suggested previously, but it is unclear whether it might be an averostran or tetanuran. Its close similarity to Dilophosaurus suggests that this left-hand mandible specimen represents a more derived basal neotheropod and we assign it to a new genus, as Newtonsaurus cambrensis.
1. Introduction
Examples of large theropod dinosaurs in the Triassic are rare, and indeed it is often asserted that large flesh-eating dinosaurs only emerged in the Middle Jurassic, with forms such as Megalosaurus (Rauhut and Hungerbühler, 1998; Griffin and Nesbitt, 2020). The role of large predators was taken in the Late Triassic by rauisuchians, ornithosuchids, and other large pseudosuchian predators, on the lineage to crocodilians. Some footprints from the Late Triassic have been interpreted as those of large theropod dinosaurs, and many Late Triassic theropods known from skeletal remains may be immature individuals not yet at full adult size (Griffin and Nesbitt, 2020). Nonetheless there is a long span in the theropod record from their origin to the evidence of the first truly large forms. The large theropod mandible Zanclodon cambrensis from the latest Triassic of South Wales is then something of an anomaly.
The holotype specimen of Zanclodon cambrensis is the natural mould of a left dentary, showing both the interior (housed at the National Museum of Wales) and exterior surfaces (housed at the British Geological Survey), and supposedly extracted from rocks of Rhaetian age, the final stage of the Triassic, dating perhaps from 205 to 201 Ma. As Newton (1899, p. 92), its first describer, noted, “the resemblance which [the] jaw bears to the corresponding parts of Megalosaurus is so striking that the reference of the fossil to the same genus appears, at first sight, to be justifiable.” Despite these similarities, however, Newton assigned the jaw to the genus Zanclodon, established by Plieninger (1846) for a jaw of a carnivorous reptile from the Erfurt Formation (= Lettenkeuper), dated as late Ladinian, from the late Middle Triassic of Germany. Zanclodon was often allied with Teratosaurus in the Family Teratosauridae, widely regarded as an early diversification of theropod dinosaurs. By 1899, many species of Zanclodon had been established, mainly based on such jaw bones of late Middle to Late Triassic age. In a subsequent revision (Rauhut and Hungerbühler, 1998; Schoch, 2011), many of these Zanclodon species were re-identified as archosauriform indet., phytosaur, or rauisuchian. Newton (1899) allied the new jaw with Megalosaurus based on similarities in the strongly recurved tooth morphology, but he noted differences in the robustness and size of the dentary when compared to Megalosaurus. However, Newton (1899, p. 93) noted that he could not compare the jaw more widely because, apart from Megalosaurus, “no lower jaws are available for comparison.”
Newton's jaw fossil has been reviewed by many since. Waldman (1974) echoed Newton's initial observations that the dentary closely resembled that of Megalosaurus, with the only substantial morphological differences being found in the teeth. Later authors concurred with this interpretation, noting resemblances with the dentaries of a variety of megalosauroid theropods (Storrs, 1993, Storrs, 1994; Galton, 1998.1, Galton, 2005), listing some potential synapomorphies (Molnar et al., 1990). However, more recent studies concur that the supposed synapomorphies have a more general distribution, being present in all Neotheropoda (Rauhut and Hungerbühler, 1998). The specimen was then tentatively placed in Coelophysoidea based on the low-lying interdental plates (Naish and Martill, 2007, p. 500) and the presence of only one Meckelian foramen (Benson, 2010). Generally, the absence of diagnostic features has left Zanclodon cambrensis as a nomen dubium. It was however named informally as a new genus ‘Newtonsaurus’ by Molnar et al. (1990).
Despite these short contributions, the specimen is of remarkable quality, even though it is only a rock mould, and no original bone remains. Further, if it is truly Rhaetian in age, it is an unusually early large predatory archosaur. It is associated with a diverse array of other reptiles including dinosaurs from a variety of locations in South Wales (Yates, 2003; Galton, 2007.1; Whiteside et al., 2016; Spiekman et al., 2023), and theropods have already been reported from the Rhaetian of Aust Cliff (Reynolds, 1946) and Lavernock Point (Galton, 1998.1). Using photogrammetry, we have generated new, three-dimensional images of the specimen, and we test the key questions of the true age of the specimen, whether it is a dinosaur or something else, and if it is a dinosaur and a theropod, what kind of theropod?
Fig. 1. Poorly preserved bivalves, right valve of Pteromya langportensis (left) and left valve of Pteromya crowcombeia (right), in the matrix of GSM 6532. These confirm a Rhaetian (Penarth Group) age, and presumed assignment to the sandstones of the Cotham Member of the Lilstock Formation, exposed widely on Stormy Down, where the specimen was originally collected.
Fig. 2. The two separate blocks containing the jaw impression of the Stormy Down archosaur (GSM 6532) that make up the holotype: (A) The medial impression and (B) the lateral impression.
Fig. 3. Digital reconstruction of the holotype specimen GSM 6532, developed by combining photogrammetry images of both slabs. In presenting the 3D model here, what were moulds in the rock become solid surfaces of the dentary. (A) In medial view, (B) in lateral view, and (C) in dorsal view.
Fig. 4. Close-up of two teeth of GSM 6532, showing fine preservation of serrations along the posterior carina. Scale bar is 10 mm.Owain Evans, Cindy Howells, Nathan Wintle, Michael J. Benton
Re-assessment of a large archosaur dentary from the Late Triassic of South Wales, United Kingdom
Proceedings of the Geologists' Association (2025) 101142, DOI: 10.1016/j.pgeola.2025.101142
Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by Elsevier B.V. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
The story of Newtonsaurus is a reminder of how science works: evidence does not remain static, and conclusions are never final. Fossils collected more than a century ago can be reinterpreted in the light of new tools and new ideas, yielding fresh insights into the ancient world. Far from undermining science, this capacity for self-correction is its greatest strength.
For creationists, however, each new discovery is one more uncomfortable fact to be explained away. A dinosaur in Late Triassic Wales fits perfectly within the evolutionary timeline of life on Earth, but it cannot be reconciled with the claim that the planet and its inhabitants were conjured into existence a few thousand years ago. The result is denial, distortion, or dismissal, none of which alter the reality preserved in stone.
In the end, the rocks tell their own story—of changing seas, shifting continents, and life adapting, diversifying, and sometimes disappearing. That story is written across millions of years and confirmed again and again by evidence. To appreciate it is to accept a universe far grander and more intricate than any simplistic myth, and one in which even a small fossil, overlooked for decades, can suddenly expand our view of deep time.
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