IT swooped from the sky and it was the size of an RAF fighter jet - and it's become the latest breed of dinosaur discovered by researchers at Hampshire universities.

The 70 million year old fossil is that of a Hatzegopteryx, part of a family of pterosaurs, a breed of reptile thought to swoop its prey from the sky which lived during the dinosaurs during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

The research has shown that it is had a short, massive neck, a wingspan of 10 to 12 metres and may have eaten shellfish.

Despite this its jaws were half a metre wide - big enough to swallow a human child.

A total of five fossil eggs which are still intact and over 40 adult bones which varied in size.

Researchers originally thought that the dinosaurs were the size of small rats, until the discovery of the fossil now showed the large pterosaurs are much significantly much bigger prey which included some large pterosaurs ate much bigger prey such as dinosaurs as large as a horse.

The T-rex dinosaur bird fossils were found on a former island called Hateg, now in the Transylvanian region of Romania.

A century of constant research found no teeth from giant predatory dinosaurs, a clue researcher’s say that pterosaurs were the biggest and most aggressive predators on the island and the first ever animals after insects to evolve powered flight.

Dr Darren Naish, Professor of Zoology at the University of Southampton and Dr Mark Witton, a Research Associate in Palaeobiology from the University of Portsmouth are both leading the study.

Dr Witton said the discovery was significantly much more important than first thought.

He said: "These bones we are taking out of Romania show that we are looking at a more robust, structure, and massive animal than we previously imagined.

"We assume the whole pterosaur is stocky and powerful, because there weren't many other large predators on the island, Hatzegopteryx may have been one of the dominant predators."

The discovery is part of a worldwide research platform into looking at these species after one was rumoured to be discovered in Idaho in the United States.