In 2011, Suzanne McIntire discovered the found 200-million-year-old fossils of a flying reptile at a riverbank at the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. Named the Eotephradactylus, t h Suzanne McIntire and her team of scientists found the jawbone of the creature that belongs to another species called the Eotephradactylus. The bones of this creature were very weak, so the bones usually got crushed by gravity before they could be preserved. Dino bones are preserved when they get covered up in volcanic ash.

The fossil was preserved by ash which probably meant it died when an asteroid hit the Earth’s surface, creating an explosion of debris and coating the world in ash. The creature might have choked to death. The name Eotephradactylus means “ash-winged dawn goddess.”

This dinosaur was once believed to be the first pterosaur on Earth. It is about 209 million years old. Dr. Kligman, an American paleontologist said: “Our ability to recognize pterosaur bones in [these ancient] river deposits suggests there may be other similar deposits from Triassic rocks around the world that may also preserve pterosaur bones.”

The researchers also described the fossils of an ancient turtle with spike-like armor and a shell that is smaller than a shoe box. This tortoise-like animal lived around the same time as the oldest known turtle, whose fossils were previously found in Germany. “This suggests that turtles rapidly dispersed across Pangaea, which is surprising for an animal that is small and is likely walking at a slow pace,” Kligman said.

Along with the pterosaur, the study also detailed other findings, including one of the world’s oldest turtle fossils, giant amphibians and armored crocodile relatives, which lived alongside evolutionary upstarts likefrogs, turtles, and pterosaurs.

“They[Eotephradactylus] have an unusually high degree of wear at their tips,” explained Dr Kligman, suggesting that this pterosaur was feeding on something with hard body parts.” He explained that the most likely prey were fish covered with bony scales.

“This fossil bed,“ Dr Kligman said, “has preserved evidence of an evolutionary ‘transition‘ 200 million years ago. We see groups that thrived later living alongside older animals that [didn’t] make it past the Triassic. Fossil beds like these enable us to establish that all of these animals actually lived together.” Details of the discovery are published in the journal titled, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Pterosauria is an order of , with a fossil record spanning from the Late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous,” said paleontologist Xuanyu Zhou.