T-Rex’s Welsh cousin: the Dai-nosaur!
It couldn’t fly or breathe fire, and lacks the vivid red scales that make its modern counterpart such an impressive sight.
But at around 200million years old, this dinosaur can definitely lay claim to being the original Welsh dragon.
Discovered on a beach in Penarth, South Wales, the ‘Dracoraptor hanigani’ could be one of the oldest Jurassic-era dinosaurs discovered anywhere in the world, according to scientists.
the meat- eating dinosaur got its name from the Latin word ‘draco’, meaning dragon, and ‘raptor’, which means thief or plunderer.
It was named by brothers Nick and Rob Hanigan, who first discovered the fossil on a beach in 2014 – affording them the privilege of also giving the dinosaur the last part of its name ‘hanigani’.
A distant relative of tyrannosaurus Rex, the small agile animal was only about 28in (70cm) tall and 6.5ft (2m) long – roughly the size of a small leopard – with a long tail to help it balance.
However the specimen found may have been a juvenile animal, as most of its bones were not yet fully formed or fused. At the time it roamed through what would eventually become Wales, the climate was much warmer than it is today.
Dr David Martill, reader in palaeobiology at Portsmouth University, said: ‘We invited Rob and Nick to name this beautiful little dinosaur and they suggested “Dracoraptor” after draco meaning dragon, the national symbol of Wales, and raptor meaning thief or plunderer.
‘the draco part of the name seemed fitting because the fossils were found in Wales and will be displayed in Wales, reflecting the red dragon of the Welsh flag.
‘Dracoraptor was a meat-eating dinosaur that would have used its small needle-sharp teeth with steak-knife serrations to pinch bits of meat here and there, hence the part of its name meaning thief.’
the new specimen’s fossilised bones were found spread across five slabs of rock, and have now been donated to the National Museum of Wales. Its skeleton was about 40 per cent intact, and is the first dinosaur skeleton of any size to be found in Wales.