21
January
2016
|
11:48
Europe/London

Oldest Jurassic dinosaur is named ‘dragon thief’ after discovery in Wales

  • New Welsh dinosaur officially named and described in paper published this week
  • The fossil can be seen in the main hall of National Museum Cardiff
  • The species name also honours Nick and Rob Hanigan who discovered the amazing fossil
Artist's impression of the dragon thief

A Welsh dinosaur discovered on a beach near Penarth in the Vale of Glamorgan last year, and identified by an academic from The University of Manchester, is back on display at National Museum Cardiff and now has a name - Dracoraptor hanigani.

The name Dracoraptor means ‘dragon thief’, Draco meaning dragon, the symbol of Wales. The species name honours Nick and Rob Hanigan who discovered the amazing fossil and have now generously donated it to Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum of Wales.

It is described in the paper “The oldest Jurassic dinosaur: a basal neotheropod from the Hettangian of Great Britain” by David Martill, Steven Vidovic, Cindy Howells and John Nudds of The University of Manchester in the online Journal PLoS ONE.

The fossil can be seen in the main hall of National Museum Cardiff from early December. Also on display for the first time will be the dinosaur’s foot, which was discovered by Sam Davies from Bridgend, a palaeontology student at the University of Portsmouth, who has donated it to the Museum and so the dinosaur now has one of its feet back. Sam discovered two blocks, which have been prepared to reveal the amazingly well preserved foot bones, still in their original alignment.

Dr John Nudds
This is only the fourth new dinosaur to be discovered in the UK since 1980, so it’s very special
Dr John Nudds

The original find was made by Nick and Rob Hanigan whilst fossil hunting along the Lavernock beach in the Vale of Glamorgan after storms in spring 2014. After a cliff fall on the beach, they spotted several loose blocks containing part of the skeleton of a small dinosaur and collected the specimen, including its skull, claws and serrated teeth.

The fossilised bones were found spread across five slabs of rock and although some were preserved together in the correct position, others had been scattered and separated by the actions of scavenging fish and sea-urchins. The specimen was preserved with the fossilised remains of these sea-urchins.

Nick and Rob took time carefully preparing the specimen and then contacted Cindy Howells, palaeontology curator for Amgueddfa Cymru who, with the help of dinosaur experts from the University of Portsmouth and The University of Manchester, analysed the teeth and bones. The team established that this particular dinosaur was a meat-eating dinosaur from the theropod group. It also suggested that it was a juvenile animal as some of its bones are not yet fully formed.

This new Welsh dinosaur was a very distant cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex and lived at the very beginning of the Jurassic Period (201 million years ago) most probably making it the oldest Jurassic dinosaur in the world. It was a small, slim, agile animal, probably only about 70cm tall and about 200cm long, with a long tail to help it balance. It lived at the time when south Wales was a coastal region like today, but with a much warmer climate, and dinosaurs were just starting to diversify. It is related to Coelophysis which lived approximately 203 to 196 million years ago in what is now the southwestern part of the United States of America.

This new specimen is the first skeleton of a theropod to be found in Wales. Isolated teeth and bones of other dinosaurs have previously been found in south Wales near Penarth, Bridgend, and Cowbridge. Nearby at Barry is one of the earliest dinosaur footprint sites in Europe dating back to the Middle Triassic around 215 million years ago.

Dr John Nudds, from The University of Manchester, said, “It’s pretty rare to discover a completely new dinosaur species – in fact this is only the fourth one to be discovered in the UK since 1980, so it’s very special. The fact that it comes from so early in the Jurassic Period, when theropod dinosaurs were evolving rapidly, makes it even more valuable to science, and will hopefully tell us a lot about dinosaur evolution at this time.”

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