Dragons really did roam Wales: ‘Dracoraptor’ dinosaur unveiled

Description

The oldest Jurassic dinosaur in the world has been named after the Welsh dragon after being found in the Vale of Glamorgan.

The 'dracoraptor' skeleton was found by fossil-hunting brothers Rob and Nick Hanigan following a cliff fall at a beach in in spring 2014.

A year later University of Portsmouth palaeontology student Steven Vidovic discovered his fossilised foot during a field trip to the very same spot.

Now the University of Portsmouth's David Martill and scientists at the University of Manchester and the National Museum Wales have concluded the new dinosaur was a very distant cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex and lived at the very beginning of the Jurassicperiod, over 200 million years ago.