Researchers at University College London identified a previously unknown dinosaur species, *Invictibellatrix amberina*, from a fossil found on England's Isle of Wight in 1924.

The piece of the back of a skull sat in a drawer at London's Natural History Museum for nearly a century before the team published their findings in the journal Royal Society Open Science, naming it the "unconquered female warrior."

The fossil was one of more than 1,000 specimens collected by amateur palaeontologist Reginald Walter Tooley and acquired by the museum in 1924, yet it went unstudied for decades.

Lead author Dr. Cassius Morrison called it "a real mystery that this fossil was overlooked for so long," noting that lots of bones are found on the Isle of Wight and "who knows what else is waiting to be discovered."

To identify the animal, researchers took a CT scan of the fossil and built a 3D model of the skull fragment and its brain cavity, comparing it with tyrannosaurs, spinosaurs and other raptors.

A distinctive combination of features — including an oval opening where the spinal cord entered the brain and an hourglass-shaped crest — plus computer algorithms repeatedly placed it within the megaraptoran group as a new species.

Invictibellatrix lived around 120 million years ago in the Early Cretaceous and is one of the smallest and earliest known megaraptorans, estimated at 10 to 13 feet long and about 5 feet tall.

Unlike T. rex, it attacked with long arms and giant curved claws 10 to 20 centimeters long rather than its mouth, likely had feathers, and hunted small dinosaurs, lizards and mammals in a role comparable to today's hyenas.

The discovery marks the first confirmed evidence of megaraptorans in Europe, filling a geographic gap in the group's migration story.

Co-author Charlie Scherer told The Independent that the 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."

Morrison added that for human-sized prey the animal would have been "more dangerous than a T. rex," since humans would have been perfectly sized quarry.

With only a partial skull identified, much of the animal's appearance is reconstructed from relatives, and researchers will keep re-examining historical museum collections for more material.

Because the Isle of Wight's coastal cliffs erode constantly, paleontologists expect additional bones to surface, and the team plans to re-check older unidentified fragments held in British storage drawers for other pieces of the "unconquered female warrior."