Machine learning identifies first British fossil of therizinosaur dinosaur

Teeth found in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Dorset are believed to belong to the maniraptorans, a group of dinosaurs, including Velociraptor, which include birds as their closest relatives. These dinosaurs evolved into numerous species during the Middle Jurassic, but because fossils during this time are scarce, knowledge of their origins are scarce too. Researchers from the Natural History Museum and Birkbeck College used pioneering machine learning techniques to train computer models to identify the mystery teeth, which push back the origin of some of the group's members by almost 30 million years. Simon Wills, a Ph.D. student at the Natural History Museum who led the research, says, "Previous research had suggested that the maniraptorans were around in the Middle Jurassic, but the actual fossil evidence was patchy and disputed. Along with fossils found elsewhere, this research suggests the group had already achieved a global distribution by this time."