This isn't 'Jurassic Park'. Older relative of velociraptor is bigger, badder, bolder.

An older fearsome bird-like relative of the velociraptor has been discovered by U.K. researchers.

Measuring about 10 feet from nose to tail, the vectiraptor greeni dinosaur lived more than 100 million years ago in the Early Cretaceous period, scientists said in findings published in the December issue of the peer-reviewed journal Cretaceous Research.

A larger, sturdier ancestor of the velociraptor – those predators were typically about 6 feet long and lived 30 million years or so later in the late Cretaceous period – the vectiraptor had large talons to prey on even larger dinosaurs; its blade-sharp teeth would allow it to feed on them. 

“This was a large, and very heavily constructed animal,” said paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Nick Longrich, who led the study from the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath, in a statement. “The bones are thick-walled and massive. It clearly didn’t hunt small prey, but animals as large or larger than itself.”

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The dinosaur is named after amateur paleontologist  Mick Green, who showed the fossils he had found on the south coast of the Isle of Wight in 2004 to Longrich and Isle of Wight paleontologist Megan Jacobs, a collaborator on the research.

Their study of the fossilized bones helped them identify a new species within the dromaeosaur, or raptor, family of bird-like carnivores. Like raptors, the vectiraptor had sharp talons and they were covered in feathers, the researchers said. Those featherless raptors in the "Jurassic Park movies are actually based on a different velociraptor ancestor Deinonychus antirrhopus – from the early Cretaceous period, according to National Geographic.

Scientists previously found a smaller raptor on the Isle of Wight, but these remains of part of the dinosaur's hips and a pair of vertebrae represent the first larger raptor found in England, researchers said. With velociraptor relatives being found in Mongolia and in the U.S., this finding suggests that England may have been a crossroads for raptors to spread across the Earth, suggests co-author Dave Martill, a paleontology professor at the University of Portsmouth. 

This new finding comes just a month after the announcement of another new species found on the Isle of Wight: the iguanodontian, a 26-foot-long herbivorous dinosaur.

“This dinosaur is incredibly exciting, adding to the huge diversity of dinosaurs here on the Isle of Wight, and helping to build a bigger picture of the Early Cretaceous world,” Jacobs said. “This little dinosaur also serves as an excellent example of the importance of amateur fossil collectors, and how working with them can produce important scientific research, which would otherwise not be possible.”

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Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @mikesnider.