| New Zealand Theropod Temporal range: Late Cretaceous |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Superorder: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | Saurischia |
| Suborder: | Theropoda |
| Family: | Megalosauridae? |
Joan Wiffen's Theropod is a currently unnamed dinosaur that was found by Joan Wiffen in Cretaceous rocks of New Zealand. It is known from one single tail vertebra, and is probably a type of Allosaur, because this is what the tail vertebra seems to resemble most. Unless a better collection of fossils is discovered, this dinosaur shall remain unnamed because it is not known whether it is a new species, or an already discovered that came to New Zealand.
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Joan Wiffen's Theropod was approximately four to five meters in length (maximum length of 15 feet) long, and like all Theropods (beside Therizinosaurus) it would have been bipedal and carnivorous. It's main food source would come from the small hypsilophodont that lived at the same place as it, and the titanosaur and ankylosaurs. Its most probable predator would have been the Moanasaurus, one of the largest mosasaurs ever discovered.
Joan Wiffen's Theropod is known from a single tail vertebra found by Joan Wiffen in the Mangahouanga Stream. Because of the lack of fossils, it is hard to determine what species of dinosaur is, although Wiffen determined that it probably came from a Megalosaur, although in reality the tail bone is more like that of an allosaur, like the Australian dinosaur Australovenator. It shall not be given an official binomial name until more about its classification is known.
The Theropod of Joan Wiffen owes its name to the group Theropoda, a group of bipedal dinosaurs that were all carnivorous. This group includes Allosaurus, Megalosaurus and most famously, Tyrannosaurus rex, plus many more.
In the time of Joan Wiffen's theropod, the continent Tasmantis had split off from Gondwana, meaning that this theropod dinosaur must have been unique to NZ, which scientists believe was much closer to the South Pole. It was mostly jungle, and dinosaur life was more common then ever. The New Zealand Theropod existed with Joan Wiffen's Sauropod and an unidentified type of pterosaur. Apart from this, not much is known.
Like most Theropods, the New Zealand variation would have been carnivorous, and would have most likely hunted sauropods and ornithopods.
Joan Wiffen's Theropod has been mentioned in the documentary The Lost Dinosaurs of New Zealand, where it was said that it was "Possibly a megalosaur", and although it is surprising that a megalosaurid survived in the Southern Hemisphere, it is not impossible, as allosaurs were thought to have gone extinct in the Late Jurassic, although Australovenator proved this theory wrong.