University of Portsmouth An artist's impression of the Dracoraptor

Palaeontologists were over the moon when two brothers, Nick and Rob Hanigan, discovered the bones of an almost complete theropod skeleton on a beach near Penarth, Wales, two years ago. The bones stretch back to the Jurassic Period, around 201-million-years ago, when the coast of Wales had a much warmer climate.

University of Portsmouth The fossilised remains of its foot

They are believed to be the oldest Jurassic dinosaur remains discovered in the UK and quite possibly the world. After analysing its skull and bones of the distant – yet much smaller – relative of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, scientists have concluded that this theropod is a previously undiscovered species of dinosaur which they have dubbed the Dracoraptor Hanigani – in honour of Wales, with Dracoraptor meaning “dragon robber” in Greek-Latin, and the Hanigan brothers.

University of Portsmouth How the dracoraptor may have looked

The small creature, which is believed to be an infant as its bones were not fully fused, measured just 70 cm tall and around 200 cm long, with most of that length coming in its tale to aid agility, according to the results published in PLOS One. David Martill, of Portsmouth University, said: "The Triassic-Jurassic extinction event is often credited for the later success of dinosaurs through the Jurassic and Cretaceous, but previously we knew very little about dinosaurs at the start of this diversification and rise to dominance.

Getty It was a distant relative of the T Rex

"Now we have Dracoraptor, a relatively complete two metre long juvenile theropod from the very earliest days of the Jurassic in Wales."