Experts have found what they believe to be a new species of theropod dinosaur — making it a shut relative of the Tyrannosaurus rex. A team of scientists claimed they just lately uncovered rare bones in the U.K. that show up to be associated to the iconic species. 

Paleontologists at the College of Southampton said they not long ago analyzed four bones on the Isle of Wight, off the southern coast of mainland England. The bones are from the neck, back and tail of the new dinosaur, named Vectaerovenator inopinatus.

The Vectaerovenator inopinatus, which is considered to have grown to all around 13 ft extensive, roamed the Earth throughout the Cretaceous time period, about 115 million decades in the past. Scientists think it is a theropod, a group of carnivorous dinosaurs that usually walked on two legs relatively than 4.

The dinosaur was named for the significant spaces of air in some of its bones — a trait that assisted researchers link it to theropods, the scientists stated. The “air sacs,” which are also uncovered in fashionable-day birds, were being extensions of the animals’ lungs that probable aided in breathing when making the skeleton lighter. 

“We had been struck by just how hollow this animal was — it truly is riddled with air areas,” guide creator Chris Barker, a PhD pupil at the university, claimed in a push launch. “Parts of its skeleton need to have been somewhat delicate.”

Scientists said all of the fossils discovered are likely to be from the same individual animal, belonging to a earlier not known genus of dinosaur. They named the discovery a “scarce find.” 

“The document of theropod dinosaurs from the ‘mid’ Cretaceous period in Europe is not that wonderful, so it’s been truly exciting to be ready to enhance our being familiar with of the range of dinosaur species from this time,” Barker reported.

The university stated the bones were being found out in 2019 by people today and households, all of whom donated their results to the nearby dinosaur museum. 

“The joy of finding the bones we found out was certainly great,” Robin Ward, an newbie fossil hunter who observed a single of the fossils, advised the university. “I considered they were being exclusive and so took them alongside when we frequented Dinosaur Isle Museum. They straight away understood these were a little something unusual and asked if we could donate them to the museum to be entirely researched.”

“It appeared various from marine reptile vertebrae I have occur across in the earlier,” James Lockyer, who identified a different 1 of the fossils, informed the university. “I was looking a spot at Shanklin and had been explained to and read through that I wouldn’t find substantially there. However, I usually make certain I lookup the places other people do not, and on this situation, it paid out off.”

The new fossils will be exhibited at the Dinosaur Isle Museum at Sandown on the Isle of White, which is properly-acknowledged as one particular of the greatest locations in Europe to find dinosaur continues to be. The researchers’ findings will be released in the journal Papers in Palaeontology.