Free Republic

Scientists have uncovered the remains of one of the largest pterosaurs on record, researchers announced in a study published Tuesday in the scientific journal Cretaceous Research. The fossils are from the largest-ever pterosaur found in South America, and one of the largest flying vertebrates in the world, according to researchers. The discovery of two separate animals was made in an outcrop in Argentina's Mendoza province and published in April. The Thanatosdrakon amaru is a new azhdarchid, a member of the pterosaur family of large, flying predators, predominantly from the Late Cretaceous Period. The name is a combination of Thanatos, the...

A group of paleontologists discovered a large, well-preserved pterosaur on a rocky beach off the coast of Scotland. Boasting roughly an 8-foot wingspan, the ancient reptile is the largest of its kind to be found from the Jurassic Period. The animal’s existence was a chance find made in 2017, when paleontologist Amelia Penney stumbled across the creature’s head while photographing dinosaur footprints on a rocky beach on the Isle of Skye. The pterosaur was promptly sawed out of the rock (with a couple pauses to deal with the tides, which threatened to wash away the fossil) and exhaustively studied; the...

Pterosaurs with these types of beaks are better known at the time period from North Africa, so it would be reasonable to assume a likeness to the North African Alanqa. Credit: Attributed to Davide Bonadonna ======================================================================= Paleontologists have made a surprising discovery while searching through 100-year-old fossil collections from the UK – a new mystery species of pterosaur, unlike anything seen before. Lead author of the project, University of Portsmouth PhD student Roy Smith, discovered the mystery creature amongst fossil collections housed in the Sedgwick Museum of Cambridge and the Booth Museum at Brighton that were assembled when phosphate mining...

Pterosaurs may have scared frenzied tourists in 2015's "Jurassic World," but a newly classified species of the ancient reptile may have scared the wits out of its prey during the Jurassic era because of its massive fangs, a trait largely unseen in any of its relatives. Known as Klobiodon rochei (which means "cage tooth"), the species was discovered after bone fragments were taken from Stonefield Slate — an area, approximately 10 miles northwest of Oxford, described as a "rich source of Jurassic fossils." It was where the Megalosaurus, the first dinosaur discovered in Britain, was found. "Klobiodon has been known...

Pterosaurs were giant flying reptiles that flew over the heads of the dinosaurs. Soaring on skin wings supported by a single huge finger, they were the largest animals ever to take wing. Originating in the Late Triassic epoch (around 215 million years ago), they thrived to the end of the Cretaceous period (66 million years ago).Triassic pterosaurs are extraordinarily rare and are known exclusively from marine deposits in the Alps (Italy, Austria and Switzerland), except for Arcticodactylus cromptonellus from fluvial deposits in Greenland.The new Triassic pterosaur is from the Saints & Sinners Quarry near Dinosaur National Monument in Utah.Named Caelestiventus...

A cache of hundreds of eggs discovered in China sheds new light on the development and nesting behavior of prehistoric, winged reptiles called pterosaurs. Pterosaurs were fearsome-looking creatures that flew during the Lower Cretaceous period alongside dinosaurs. This particular species was believed to have a massive wingspan of up to 13 feet, and likely ate fish with their large teeth-filled jaws. Researchers working in the Turpan-Hami Basin in northwestern China collected the eggs over a 10-year span from 2006 to 2016. A single sandstone block held at least 215 well-preserved eggs that have mostly kept their shape. Sixteen of those...

A monstrous, meat-eating flying reptile that had a wingspan of a small airplane, could walk on all fours and stalked its prey on land has been found in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. Fortunately for us humans, who would have made for a delightful midday snack, this pterosaur is dead. Long dead. Seventy million years dead. With an approximately 36-foot wingspan, “It might have been this quite robust, formidable predator,” Mark Witton, an expert on pterosaurs at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K., told National Geographic. “They seem to be feeding on things on the ground and are generalist...

Want to find the nearest pterosaur? There's an app for that — or a database, at least. A newly developed website catalogs more than 1,300 specimens of extinct flying reptiles called pterosaurs, thus enabling users to map out the ancient creatures on Google Earth. The goal is to help researchers find trends in the evolution and diversity of these ancient winged reptiles. "Having a very specific database like this, which is just for looking at individual fossil specimens of pterosaurs, is very helpful, because you can ask questions that you couldn't have answered with bigger databases [of more animals]," said...

For most of us, "pterodactyls" are imagined as large, vicious and ugly gargoyles with lanky limbs, leathery wings and jaws lined with savage teeth, the sort of disreputable brutes we find in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, the Jurassic Park franchise – even a recent episode of Doctor Who. Such works suggest we should think ourselves lucky that these flying reptiles – some of which measured 10 metres across the wings and stood as tall as giraffes – were confined to landscapes populated by equally terrible dinosaurs, marine reptiles and turbulent volcanoes during a time known as the Mesozoic...

A new study claims that the ancient winged reptiles known as pterosaurs used a "pole-vaulting" action to take to the air.They say the creatures took off using all four of their limbs. The reptiles vaulted over their wings, pushing off first with their hind limbs and then thrusting themselves upwards with their powerful arm muscles - not dissimilar to some modern bats. The research is published in the open-access journal Plos One. Pterosaurs lived at the same time as the dinosaurs, but belonged to a different group of reptiles. They existed from the Triassic Period until the end of the...