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Courtesy of Mark Witton, PLoS ONE
This image shows a full body reconstruction of the new type of pterosaur Eurazhdarcho langendorfensis, with preserved skeletal elements in white.
By Megan Gannon
LiveScience
Scientists say they've discovered the fossilized bones of a new type of pterosaur, a flying dinosaur-age reptile, which lived about 68 million years ago and had a wingspan of nearly 10 feet (3-meters).
The skeletal bits of the midsized pterosaur were found in Sebes-Glod in Romania's Transylvanian Basin, famous for its rich array of Late Cretaceous fossils, including crocodylomorphs (ancient relatives of crocodiles), mammals, turtles and dinosaurs like the dwarf sauropod Magyarosaurus dacus and the dromaeosaur Balaur. Scientists dubbed the new reptile Eurazhdarcho langendorfensis and say it belonged to a group of pterosaurs called the azhdarchids.
Pterosaurs lived among the dinosaurs and became extinct about the same time, but they were not dinosaurs. They are sometimes wrongly called pterodactyls, which actually just describes the first genus of pterosaur discovered by scientists in the 18th century. Small pterosaurs developed during the Triassic Period, about 230 to 200 million years ago. Later, during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, more advanced forms of the flying reptiles, like azhdarchids, started evolving.
"These were long-necked, long-beaked pterosaurs whose wings were strongly adapted for a soaring lifestyle," researcher Darren Naish, a paleontologist from the U.K.'s University of Southampton, said in a statement. "Several features of their wing and hind limb bones show that they could fold their wings up and walk on all fours when needed."
The wingspan of Eurazhdarcho indicates it would have been "large, but not gigantic" compared to some of its cousins, Naish said. (The researchers pointed to the example of the giant azhdarchid, Hatzegopteryx thambema, whose bones found in the Romanian town of Hateg show that its wings would have stretched out 36 feet, or 11 meters, during flight.) The discovery brings new evidence to the debate about how azhdarchids lived, the scientists say.
"It has been suggested that they grabbed prey from the water while in flight, that they patrolled wetlands and hunted in a heron or stork-like fashion, or that they were like gigantic sandpipers, hunting by pushing their long bills into mud," Gareth Dyke, a paleontologist from the National Oceanography Center Southampton, said in a statement.
The newly found fossil was uncovered alongside dinosaurs and other terrestrial animals, suggesting that azhdarchids stalked small animal prey in woodlands, plains and scrublands rather than in coastal habitats.
"Eurazhdarcho supports this view of azhdarchids, since these fossils come from an inland, continental environment where there were forests and plains as well as large, meandering rivers and swampy regions," Dyke said.
The findings were detailed online Jan. 30 in the journal PLOS ONE.
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68-million years ago--The bible says the earth in 10,000 years old
Seriously, first post and all you can do is troll?
I think it's pretty incredible that they're able to figure out so much about this dinosaur from just a few bone fragments.
I wonder if they considered that maybe it's a juvenile. Or how they determine the age of the animal at time of death.
what bullcrap!!!you can tell what something looks like from a few freakin' bones that are scattered about in rock????NO WAY!!!!
First off, they didn't say what it looked like... they just made a informed analysis basing it on comparisons to other species they have a better understanding of.
Why is it people can't accept that there are people who spend 40+hours a week looking at rocks, bones, etc... identifying them, comparing them, measuring them, etc? It's all they freaking do! They've probably compared these few pieces of bone with others species they have positively identified, and have come up with a agreement (peer reviewed...) that this is something similar to another species, but never seen before. These particular fossils were found in 2009 and they didn't release their paper on them until just recently. It ain't like some highschool student found a bone last monday afternoon, got on google and decided what it was, and wrote a report on thursday night.
I went to a collision site once where two jets had collided at speed on runway... there were bits and shreads everywhere... the mechanics that worked on these jets 40+hours a week could identify the smallest shreads of debris on the runway stating what it was, or whether it was part of 'their plane' or not. It was hilarious to me they could look at a flake of wiring insulation and say "Yep, that's off the Cessna Citation...." and the other mechanic would look and say, "Yep, that's not off the A4..." Experts in their fields of study really are just that...