Scientist Discovers New Pterosaur Species
Smithsonian researchers have recently discovered North America’s oldest pterosaur species in a fossil from 2011. The fossil, which was a pterosaur’s jawbone, was unearthed in Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona and originally thought to be an existing species, but it was proven to be a new find by modern scanning.
The researchers, led by paleontologist Ben Kligman, a Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, published a paper on July 8th, outlining their discovery of the new species, presenting the 2011 jawbone, as well as other fossils found at the same bonebed.
The team named the new species Eotephradactylus mcintireae, which means “ash-winged dawn goddess”, referencing the volcanic ash the jawbone was preserved.
“The site captures the transition to more modern terrestrial vertebrate communities where we start seeing groups that thrive later in the Mesozoic living alongside these older animals that don’t make it past the Triassic,” Dr. Kligman said. “Fossil beds like these enable us to establish that all of these animals actually lived together.”
The Petrified Forest National Park, where the bone was found, was positioned in a semi-arid area in the middle of Pangaea, just above the equator, 209 million years ago. The landscape was cut by small river channels and prone to seasonal floods. These floods washed sediment and volcanic ash into the channels. One of the floods likely buried the unlucky pterosaur.
The researchers also found many other fossils in the bonebed, including fish, teeth, and fossilized feces, or coprolites.
After performing carbon dating on the surrounding rock, they found the fossil is 209 million years old and dates as the earliest pterosaur in North America.
“The bones of Triassic pterosaurs are small, thin, and often hollow, so they get destroyed before they get fossilized,” said Dr. Kligman.
The teeth were, luckily, still attached to the jaw. After the analysis, the group identified what the animal ate.
“They 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.”
Good work. Add a conclusion and explain your evidence
