'Chief Dragon' is UK's oldest meat-eating dinosaur, says Natural History Museum

Four tiny fossil remains which had been discovered in a Welsh mine earlier have now been classified as a unique species of dinosaur. According to researchers from London's Natural History Museum (NHM), Pendraig milnerae is considered to be the earliest meat-eating dinosaur that was unearthed in the United Kingdom. The research findings suggest that this species of dinosaur had a body the size of a chicken with a long tail, that lived around 200 million years ago and was indirectly linked to Tyrannosaurus rex (T. Rex).  

Pendraig is a name that means "chief dragon" in the Middle Welsh language. During its habitat, the species was most probably the top predator, though it was not quite gigantic. A BBC report quoted Dr Stephan Spiekman of the National Museum of Natural History who explained that “It was a typical theropod; so, a meat-eating dinosaur that walked around on two legs, like T. rex or Velociraptor... but much earlier in time”. 

Discovery of UK's oldest meat-eating dinosaur

Pendraig is identified by only four bone fragments, all of which are in excellent condition which comprises a vertebra, pelvic components, and a femur. In the 1950s, these artefacts were extracted from a limestone quarry in Cowbridge, South Wales.  

Their intriguing characteristics were periodically discussed inside the NHM; however, the fossil material was eventually misplaced in the museum's enormous archives, wrongly placed among crocodilian remnants. The remains were just recently discovered in the "wrong drawer" and identified for their actual importance, BBC reported.  

The chief dragon belongs to ancient times and is predicted to be from the late Triassic period which is nearly 214 million years ago, making it at the beginning of dinosaur evolution. According to researchers, it is speculated that Pendraig became a fossil when T. rex and Velociraptor were still living during the Cretaceous era, right before an asteroid wiped them both off 66 million years ago.  

The present Bristol Channel area of the UK was earlier a collection of islands that was formed from a lot older limestone, according to geological studies of the British Isles. The study further states that Pendraig would have resided on one of the archipelago's islands. However, there are only assumptions about how this species had perished. Its bones, on the other hand, were stuck in a fissure, inside the limestone when discovered. It is speculated that the dinosaur might have fallen in and died.  

According to the Guardian, Richard Butler, a co-author of a study on the dinosaur and professor of palaeobiology at the University of Birmingham stated that dinosaurs' findings are very uncommon in Wales, and this was just the third dinosaur specimen known from the nation.    

(Image: Unsplash/ Representative Image)