A flying dragon with gigantic wings and long, sharp teeth: it is the image of a pterosaur, a flying reptile that lived alongside its dinosaur cousins in the Mesozoic Era, which began 252 million years ago.
Now in Australia, scientists have restudied the fossilized remains of two pterosaurs, discovered in the 1980s and dated to 107 million years ago. And they have ascertained that these are the oldest pterosaur remains so far unearthed on this continent. One of the fossils is a small wing bone, the first belonging to a juvenile individual found so far in Australia. The other is part of a pelvic bone, belonging to an adult pterosaur with a wingspan of over two meters.
The fossils had been discovered at Cape Otway south of Melbourne in a sea cliff by a team from the Research Institute of the State Museum of Victoria. They had not previously been covered in peer-reviewed scientific research, which has now been published in Historical Biology.
For decades the remains had remained in the collection of the Museum of Victoria, until palaeontology student Adele Portland, of Perth’s Curtin University decided to formally describe and analyze them as part of her PhD. The researcher compared the fossils, dated to 107 million years ago, with the remains of other known pterosaurs. And he concluded that the pelvic bone belonged to an adult pterosaur with a wingspan of at least two meters, while the wing bone is very small compared to adult bones, and concluded that it belonged to a juvenile specimen with a one meter wing, the first to be discovered in Australia.
Source: Ansa
I am a journalist with over 6 years of experience working in the news industry. I currently work as an author for Global Happenings, and my coverage focuses on Technology news. I have written for various publications, including Reuters, The New York Times and The Guardian.
