Introduction:
Neovenator, meaning New Hunter, literally that is what it means in Greek (neo meaning new) and Latin (venator meaning hunter) is one of, if not, a really underrated dinosaur. It is a well researched and has been described from several skeletons of this species when discovered yet this dinosaur is quite underrepresented. This dinosaur belonged in the clade, Carcharodontosauria which is named after the famous, Carcharodontosaurus. Even though the dinosaur is not as big as its some cousins, it still is an important discovery and it helped in the diversifying of the clade. In this blog article, I will go over the facts and easily define what makes a Neovenator. So, let’s get diggin’!!!
Discovery:
The first bones of Neovenator were found in the summer of 1978, when a storm made part of the Grange Chine collapsed. Rocks containing the fossils of Neovenator fell onto the beach of Brightstone Bay on the southwest coast of Isle of Wight. Isle of Wight is gonna come up a lot when talking about dinosaurs found in UK.
The rocks found were dated to be around 125 million years old, the Early Cretaceous and the fossils were collected by the Henwood family and later on, collected by a geology student by the name of David Richards and he sent those fossils to Dinosaur Isle Museum and the British Museum of Natural History. That was a lot of ‘and’s in one sentence!
But surprisingly, Neovenator went through the same classification problem like it’s relative in the family tree, the Altispinax/Becklespinax. The bones found were thought to be of an Iguanodontid, Mantellisaurus and later on, the Mantellisaurus specimen bones became another new genus called Brighstoneus and the tail bones were thought to be of a Theropod. So, before we move on, let me clarify that both Mantellisaurus and Brighstoneus are separate genus and Brighstoneus was separated from Mantellisaurus when they found Brighstoneus, which were thought to be of Mantellisaurus, were quite different and became Brighstoneus. But in this case, the bones were not of either of them but the paleontologist did not properly study them.
Fortunately, unlike Altispinax/Becklespinax, paleontologists actually did go out to find more fossil remains of Neovenator. Several amateur paleontologists, among them Keith and Jenny Simmonds found a lot of fossils like the snout, teeth, a front lower jaw, most of the back bone column, ribs, belly ribs, tail bones, shoulder girdle, pelvis bones and a hindlimb. These approximated to be 70% of the entire skeleton.
In 1985, an expedition led by Steve Hutt, found 2 back bones and another expedition by Jenny Simmonds in 1987, found a 3rd skeleton containing back bones and pelvic bones. Another 4th Neovenator was found by Nick Oliver which consisted of lower jaw, parts of the cervical back bone and limb elements.
For the time being in 1990, Hutt described the Neovenator to be a new species of Megalosaurus. Yes, again describing a separate genus as a part of the Megalosaurus trope is back. It does get really annoying to be honest. But Neovenator did not stay as a Megalosaurus for too long because in 1996, paleontologists Steve Hutt, David Martill and Michael Barker re-examined all the finds of Neovenator and published the paper describing the Neovenator as a separate genus from the Megalosaurus and it was a new dinosaur on its’ own.
It finally got the name Neovenator salerii. In 2008, paleontologists, Stephen Louis Brusatte, Roger Benson and Hutt re-described with greater detail for the last time and yes, Hutt is back again for the 3rd time, he seems to be obsessed with Neovenator. There has been multiple founds of this dinosaur as well as teeth found in France in 2012. This dinosaur was a quite difficult to place in what clade it belonged to and it was finally decided that belonged in the Carcharodontosauridae clade. I will have more articles soon about this dinosaurs in this clade.
Biology:
Neovenator could grow up to 2.5 m (8ft) tall and 7 m (23 ft) in length and weighing at least 1 ton. It was very slender and sleek so that it could easily move around forest and marshes it lived in during the Early Cretaceous. Neovenator has a lot of unique features that makes it unique from other theropods such as its nostril was twice as long as well as set high.
It also had a pair of very short crests that ran down from the front of its eyes to the nose. It also had quite large hand claws and one of the most unique trait it possessed was sensory nerves at the snout which could be used to help find fish underwater but paleontologist are not quite sure what it was used for but this trait mainly appears in Spinosauridae and not Carcharodontosauridae. The ecology Neovenator lived was very diverse and it was the apex predator of the ecosystem even though there were a lot of different theropods living alongside it like Ceratosuchops, Riparovenator, Baryonyx, and Eotyrannus but there were also herbivores like Polacanthus and Iguanodon.
Media:
Surprisingly, with all the research done and the amount of fossil remains it has for a UK dinosaur, I am shocked with how little anybody knows about this dinosaur that it is not even shown in any documentaries either. I feel like the documentaries also have this Hollywood problem. Documentaries always uses the overused and already popular dinosaurs to bring in viewers, but now, most people already knows about those dinosaurs but the documentary producers are afraid of including new dinosaurs which they think that it might not draw people in for the documentary but then audiences want something new and they skip the overused dinosaur species in the documentary and the cycle continues until documentaries become obsolete.
This was really the case of sometime as there was a drought of dinosaur documentaries and only recently it had a resurgence, thanks to re-invigoration by Jurassic World/Park franchise. But what I mean to say is that people in the Media need to take risks and include in a more variety of dinosaurs to bring attention to the audiences and drive the knowledge and amazement of these wonderful dinosaurs.
Merchandise:
Neovenator is a very underrated dinosaur and there is not really any media presence about this dinosaur but there is a couple of merchandise that you can get one for yourself from my Amazon affiliate links and you getting it from my link will help me in supporting this passion project and thank you very much if you did!
Now, before you go, I hope you learned something about this unique theropod and make sure to keep coming back for more new dino and prehistoric info!!
