An artist’s illustration of the new theropod dinosaur, Invictibellatrix amberina (centre of the image), in its ecosystem on the Isle of Wight, United Kingdom in the Early Cretaceous (around 120 million years ago). It lived in what was likely a seasonally wet-to-dry floodplain environment and is surrounded by other dinosaurs including large long-necked rebbachisaurid sauropods (directly behind Invictibellatrix, centre) and relatives of Iguanodon (right). A spinosaurid theropod, potentially the apex predator of the time, fishes (left). Invictibellatrix has just caught and is consuming two small mammals. Gymnosperms dominate the environment as flowering plants (angiosperms) were not common at this time. Other reptiles including relatives to modern lizards, crocodiles and turtles enjoy the warm Early Cretaceous weather of the UK.
Credit: Sergey Krasovskiy and Pedro Salas.
Palaeontologists do not need to set out to refute biblical creationism. They merely need to investigate the history of life, and the evidence does the job for them. Another example comes from the Isle of Wight, where a fossil has revealed a previously unrecognised predatory dinosaur that lived about 120 million years ago — long before the supposed ‘Creation Week’ of a literal reading of Genesis. While creationists struggle to squeeze the history of an entire planet into a few thousand years, researchers are reconstructing the evolutionary relationships and geographical movements of animals separated from us by immense stretches of geological time.
The fundamental problem creationists have created for themselves is that, because there is vastly more history pre-'Creation Week' than there is post-'Creation Week', by several orders of magnitude, virtually every palaeontological, geological and archaeological discovery incidentally refutes creationism, so the most risible and dishonest mental gymnastics have to be invoked to dismiss it all, and creationists end up looking both intellectually and morally bankrupt.
For example, as described in a study, published in Royal Society Open Science, a team led by University College London (UCL) researchers has identified Invictibellatrix amberina, the first recognised European member of a group of carnivorous dinosaurs known as megaraptorans. The discovery concerns a partial skull acquired by the Natural History Museum in 1924. CT scanning and anatomical comparisons have now revealed its significance. From its relatives, the researchers infer an animal around three to four metres long, probably feathered and equipped with substantial grasping arms and curved claws.
The discovery also helps fill a geographical gap in the group’s known distribution, supporting the hypothesis that megaraptorans dispersed from Asia through Europe towards the southern continents. This is the sort of question evolutionary science can investigate: how related animals diversified, where they lived, and how changing geography influenced their distribution. A fossil becomes evidence within a wider, testable account of life’s history.
For young-Earth creationism, however, the difficulty begins before any discussion of the animal’s family tree. Its Early Cretaceous age is already irreconcilable with the proposed biblical chronology. Calling it a victim of Noah’s Flood does not resolve that contradiction; it merely substitutes a preferred story for the geological evidence. The claim would still need to explain why fossils occur in their particular stratigraphic sequence, and why that sequence records successive ecosystems rather than one recently overwhelmed world.
Here, then, is the familiar contrast. Science revisits an old museum specimen and extracts new knowledge from it, allowing evidence to refine its conclusions. Biblical literalism starts with conclusions that must remain untouched, then demands that the evidence somehow accommodate them. The resulting mental gymnastics may preserve a belief, but they provide no explanation of the fossil. A fragment of dinosaur skull has no theological agenda. Its inconvenience lies simply in belonging to a real history far older and more complex than the childishly simplistic chronology creationists insist on extracting from Genesis.
Megaraptorans — An Evolutionary History with a European Gap. Before the identification of Invictibellatrix amberina on the Isle of Wight, palaeontologists already knew that megaraptorans had a long evolutionary history and a wide geographical distribution. What remained uncertain was their precise relationship to other predatory dinosaurs and how they had spread between continents.The paper in Royal Society Open Science was accompanied by a UCL news report:
What were megaraptorans?
Megaraptorans were two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs with powerful arms and enlarged, curved hand claws. Despite their name, they were not simply oversized versions of Velociraptor. Their characteristic weapons were on their hands, rather than the specialised sickle-shaped foot claws associated with dromaeosaurs.
Their position in the dinosaur family tree has been debated. Earlier analyses sometimes grouped them with allosauroids; others placed them among coelurosaurs, either within the wider tyrannosaur lineage or as its closest related branch. The 2025 study describing Joaquinraptor supported a sister-group relationship with Tyrannosauroidea. Calling them close relatives of tyrannosaurs is therefore reasonable, but their exact evolutionary position remains an active research question.
Where had they been found?
These discoveries documented a lineage that existed over many tens of millions of years. However, incomplete skeletons and disputed identifications meant that some details of its distribution and relationships remained provisional.
Region Examples Significance Asia Fukuiraptor from Japan; Phuwiangvenator and the more uncertain Vayuraptor from Thailand. Early Cretaceous animals placed close to the base of the megaraptoran family tree in several analyses. Australia Australovenator, the specimen nicknamed “Lightning Claw”, and other fragmentary remains. Evidence that megaraptorans were established in the southern continents early in their known history. South America Megaraptor, Murusraptor, Aerosteon, Tratayenia, Maip and Joaquinraptor, particularly from Patagonia. A later radiation that included large predators and persisted until close to the end of the Cretaceous.
How did they spread between continents?
Several studies favoured an Asian origin followed by dispersal into Gondwana, the southern supercontinent. A 2016 study of Australian material proposed that Australia played an important role in the subsequent diversification of megaraptorids, with interchange between Australia, Antarctica and South America.
These continents did not occupy their present positions or have their present climates. Former connections offered opportunities for animals to spread between regions that are now separated by oceans. Antarctica was therefore a plausible part of a dispersal route, although an inferred route should not be confused with direct fossil evidence from every stage along it.
A 2025 analysis of megaraptoran biogeography also reconstructed a widespread early distribution and anticipated further discoveries in the northern continents. Before the Isle of Wight identification, however, Europe remained a conspicuous gap in the accepted fossil record.
From smaller predators to giants
The known fossils suggest a broad increase in body size among later South American megaraptorans. Some became major predators in Patagonian ecosystems. Maip, described in 2022, was estimated to have reached about nine to ten metres in length, while Joaquinraptor, described in 2025, showed that the group persisted near the end of the Cretaceous.
This was a branching evolutionary radiation, not a ladder in which each named species became the next. Different lineages occupied different regions and ecological roles, and the fossils preserve only part of that diversity.
What does the European discovery change?
Invictibellatrix amberina provides the first recognised European megaraptoran, supporting the hypothesis that Europe formed part of a dispersal route between Asia and the southern continents. One specimen cannot establish every stage of that journey, but it supplies evidence from a region where it had previously been missing.
The important point is that this discovery enters an evolutionary framework developed before the fossil was identified. Researchers had already inferred a wider distribution than the known specimens directly demonstrated. The new evidence allows that reconstruction to be tested and refined — an example of how science turns gaps in knowledge into questions that further discoveries can answer.
Brief glossary
- Megaraptora
- The broader evolutionary group containing megaraptorans.
- Megaraptoridae
- A subgroup within Megaraptora, including many of the Australian and South American forms.
- Tyrannosauroidea
- The wider tyrannosaur lineage, including early relatives as well as later animals such as Tyrannosaurus rex.
- Biogeography
- The study of the geographical distribution of organisms and the processes that produced it.
- Evolutionary radiation
- The diversification of an ancestral lineage into multiple descendant lineages.
UK dinosaur fossil identified as new long-clawed predator
A new species of dinosaur, a long-clawed predator up to four metres long, has been discovered by a UCL-led team from a fossil found on the Isle of Wight.
The dinosaur, described in a new paper in the journal Royal Society Open Science, belongs to a group of agile, two-legged carnivores called megaraptorans and is the first of this group to be found in Europe.
Megaraptorans were closely related to tyrannosaurs including Tyrannosaurus rex but had slender heads, attacking prey with their large arms and giant curved claws instead of their jaws.
While some species grew to gigantic sizes, just as tyrannosaurs did, this new species is one of the smallest and earliest of the group to be found, living in the UK in the Early Cretaceous period about 120 million years ago.
It has been named Invictibellatrix amberina. Invictibellatrix means “unconquered female warrior” – honouring megaraptorans’ future role as massive apex predators.
The fossil, a chunk of the back of a skull, was acquired by the Natural History Museum in 1924 and had been overlooked for study until now.
Based on what we know about its closest relatives, Invictibellatrix would have been three to four metres long and just over a metre and a half in height - about as tall as a human. 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. It was not the apex predator of its time, but for humans this dinosaur would have been more dangerous than a T. rex. 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. It is a real mystery that this fossil was overlooked for so long, sitting in a drawer for nearly 100 years. Lots of bones are found on the Isle of Wight – who knows what else is waiting to be discovered.
Dr Cassius Morrison, lead author
Department of Earth Sciences
University College London
London, UK.
Megaraptors are regarded as the most mysterious of the large, meat-eating dinosaurs, as few megaraptor fossils have been found.
They are thought to have originated in Asia, before migrating through Europe and becoming apex predators throughout the southern land mass of Gondwana (including present-day Africa, South America and Antarctica).
But until now, this theory was missing key fossil evidence, as no megaraptorans had been found in Europe.
This new species is the first proof we have that megaraptorans were also present in Europe and that they reached Gondwana this way rather than island-hopping further south.
Charlie Scherer, co-author
Department of Earth Sciences
University College London
London, UK.
For the study, researchers undertook a CT scan of the fossil, creating a 3D model of this part of the skull as well as a model of the interior of the skull, i.e. the brain.
The researchers compared the fossil with skulls and brain cases from tyrannosaurs, spinosaurs, raptors and other two-legged meat-eating dinosaurs.
A unique combination of skull features, including an oval hole where the spinal cord entered the brain and an hour-glass-shaped crest, led researchers to conclude it was a new species.
Fossil of newly identified theropod dinosaur, Invictibellatrix amberina. The oval hole is where the brain would have been.
Credit: The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London
Computer algorithms analysing how the traits of the skull fit in with those of other species consistently found the specimen belonged to the megaraptoran family.
The research team also used mathematical modelling to investigate how the spread of megaraptors around the world might have changed over time, based on fossils discovered so far, dinosaurs’ evolutionary trees, geography and climate.
The team concluded that megaraptors were globally widespread in the Early Cretaceous (i.e., at the time of Invictibellatrix), but by the Late Cretaceous tens of millions of years later they had likely become extinct in the giant northern landmass of Laurasia (including modern-day Europe).
During this later period, megaraptors became apex predators throughout Gondwana in the south, reaching gigantic sizes, with claws up to 35cm (14in) long.*
The study did not explain why megaraptors likely died out in the north, but this may have been a result of shifts in climate or environment, or the presence of competing predators such as other tyrannosaurs.
The Invictibellatrix fossil was originally found at the foot of a cliff on the south-west coast of the Isle of Weight by amateur palaeontologist Reginald Walter Tooley. It was one of more than 1,000 specimens discovered by Tooley that were acquired by the Natural History Museum after his death.
Despite over 200 years of collecting, the Isle of Wight continues to surprise us with new dinosaur species, and finds of carnivorous dinosaurs, such as Invictibellatrix, have been particularly elusive. Work like this shows the exceptional value of working with historical museum collections where there are still many discoveries to be made.
Professor Paul M. Barrett, senior author
Fossil Reptiles, Amphibians and Birds Section
Natural History Museum
London, UK.
In the paper, the researchers said the name Invictibellatrix was intended to “give hope and strength to all those who are bullied, discriminated, victimised, and oppressed that tomorrow will be theirs and not to give up in face of such odds”. Amberina, meanwhile, refers to the amber found in the rocks where the fossil was discovered, as well as to the female name.
*Maip macrothorax, for instance, found in what is now Argentina, was an estimated nine to 10 metres long and weighed as much as an elephant.
Publication:
The significance of Invictibellatrix amberina extends beyond adding another name to the dinosaur catalogue. Its identification helps fill a geographical gap in an evolutionary history reconstructed from fossils, anatomy and the changing arrangement of continents. Evolution provides the framework that makes these observations intelligible: related animals inherited shared features, diversified and spread as opportunities arose. No special creation event is needed to explain their relationships or distribution.
There are still questions about precisely where megaraptorans belong in the dinosaur family tree and which routes they followed between continents. Those uncertainties are subjects for further research, not evidence that the entire evolutionary account is in doubt. Revising a branch of the family tree does not bring a 120-million-year-old dinosaur within the few thousand years permitted by young-Earth creationism. Nor does calling its burial a consequence of Noah’s Flood explain the geological context in which it was preserved.
For biblical literalists, accommodating this evidence requires the familiar mental gymnastics: rejecting the chronology, invoking a global catastrophe and treating whatever remains unexplained as support for the preferred story. But an explanation must do more than protect a belief from contradiction. It must account for the evidence and offer some means of testing whether it is wrong. A conclusion that cannot be revised, whatever the fossils reveal, is an article of faith rather than a scientific finding.
Meanwhile, a skull fragment collected more than a century ago has yielded fresh knowledge because researchers asked new questions and applied new techniques. That is how understanding advances. The specimen was never obliged to conform to Genesis, and its history does not become shorter because an ancient text requires it. Once again, science has made creationism’s problem worse simply by getting on with the business of finding out what happened.
Advertisement
Amazon
Amazon
Amazon
Amazon
Amazon
Amazon
Amazon
Amazon
Amazon
Amazon
Amazon
Amazon
All titles available in paperback, hardcover, ebook for Kindle and audio format.
Prices correct at time of publication. for current prices.
No comments :
Post a Comment
Obscene, threatening or obnoxious messages, preaching, abuse and spam will be removed, as will anything by known Internet trolls and stalkers, by known sock-puppet accounts and anything not connected with the post,
A claim made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Remember: your opinion is not an established fact unless corroborated.