NEWTONSAURUS
a theropod dinosaur from the Late Triassic of South Wales.
Pronunciation: NYOO?ton?SOR?us
Meaning: Newton's lizard
Author/s: Evans
et al. (
2025)
Synonyms: See below
First Discovery: Bridgend, South Wales
Discovery Chart Position: #1177
Newtonsaurus cambrensis
(Newton's Lizard from Wales)Etymology
Newtonsaurus is derived from "Newton" (for Edwin Tulley Newton who described the remains in 1899 and referred them to
Zanclodon as
Zanclodon cambrensis) and the Greek "sauros" (lizard). This name was coined, unofficially, in 1999 in a privately circulated work by Stephan Pickering, containing an extract from an unpublished manuscript by the late Samuel Paul Welles.
The
species epithet, is derived from "Cambria" (the Latin name for Wales) and the Latin "-ensis" (from)
ZooBank registry:
urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:708B59EB-4388-41C6-AC4F-CC0F628459A0.
Synonyms
Zanclodon cambrensis (Newton, 1899)
Megalosaurus cambrensis (Molnar, 1990)
Discovery
The remains of
Newtonsaurus were discovered in the Cotham Member of the Lilstock Formation (Penarth Group) on Stormy Down, near Bridgend, South Wales, by a local mason who was preparing stone for a wall in 1898.
The
holotype (GSM 6532) is the impression of a left lower jaw—a sort of negative fossil—preserved within a stone slab which was split in two, with one block (housed at the National Museum of Wales) containing the inside, and the other (housed at the British Geological Survey) the outside.
Estimations
Timeline:
Era: Mesozoic
Epoch: Triassic
Stage: Rhaetian
Age range: 205-201 mya
Stats:
Est. max. length: 7 meters
Est. max. hip height: ?
Est. max. weight: ?
Diet: Carnivore
References
• Newton ET (1899) On a megalosaurid jaw from Rhaetic beds near Bridgend (Glamorganshire).
Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, 55: 89–96.
• Molnar RE, Kurzanov SM and Dong Z (1990) "Carnosauria". Page 169-209 in Weishampel, Dodson and Osmolska (eds.) "The Dinosauria: First Edition".
• Pickering S (1995) "Jurassic Park: Unauthorized Jewish Fractals in Philopatry".
A Fractal Scaling in Dinosaurology Project, 2nd revised printing: 1-478.
• Molina-Pérez R and Larramendi A (2019) "Dinosaur Facts and Figures: The Theropods and Other Dinosauriformes".
• Evans O, Howells C, Wintle N and Benton MJ (2025) "Re-assessment of a large archosaur dentary from the Late Triassic of South Wales, United Kingdom".
Proceedings of the Geologists' Association: 101142. DOI: 10.1016/j.pgeola.2025.101142.
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To cite this page:
Atkinson, L.
"
NEWTONSAURUS :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
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http://www.dinochecker.com/dinosaurs/NEWTONSAURUS›. Web access: 06th Mar 2026.
