A fossilized dinosaur discovered in South Wales in 2014 has recently been officially named as the Dracoraptor hanigani. It is the earliest known relative of the Tyrannosaurus rex.
The dinosaur, which is 201 million years old, is named Dracoraptor, which partly translates to "dragon thief" and hanigani is after the brothers, Rob and Nick Hanigan, who discovered the fossil at a cliff in the vicinity of the Glamorganshire Golf Club. It is known to be the oldest discovered dinosaur in the United Kingdom from the Jurassic Era, according to the BBC.
Meet the Dracoraptor - one of the ‘oldest’ Jurassic dinosaurs and found on a Welsh beach https://t.co/QwKAUV8rmp pic.twitter.com/YSRkkju0f4
— Mike Griffiths (@mrmikegriffiths) January 20, 2016
An estimated 40 percent of the skeleton was preserved including its cranial parts, teeth, foot and claw.
David Martill from the University of Portsmouth is the leading author of the analysis of the Dracoraptor published on Plos One, "The Oldest Jurassic Dinosaur: A Basal Neotheropod from the Hettangian of Great Britain."
"It was the most beautiful little fossil I'd seen in a very, very long time," Martial said about the specimen, according to CBS.
"Dinosaur remains are really rare. This animal is the very first dinosaur from the Jurassic of Wales," he added. "There are few scrappy bits of pieces from the Triassic, slightly older rocks but this is just inside the Jurassic."
Despite being a close relative of the gigantic T. Rex, the Dracoraptor is a relatively small dinosaur as tall as 2.3 feet and can be as long as 6.5 feet long, tail included.
Steven Vidovic, one of the authors of the study, noted that the Dracoraptor opens a new window on how dinosaurs dominated the Earth. "The Triassic-Jurassic extinction event is often credited for the later success of dinosaurs through the Jurassic and Cretaceous, but previously we knew very little about dinosaurs at the start of this diversification and rise to dominance," Vidovic said, according to Popular Science. "Now we have Dracoraptor, a relatively complete two-meter long juvenile theropod from the very earliest days of the Jurassic in Wales."
