For paleontologist Ben Kligman, the query was: Is that this fragile jawbone a pterosaur or not?
Different researchers additionally had questions concerning the fossil, unearthed together with hundreds of others throughout a decades-long archaeological dig at a distant bone mattress within the Petrified Forest Nationwide Park in Arizona. Some thought the bone may’ve been a mammal, Kligman informed CBS Information.
Now, their new analysis provides perception into North America’s oldest identified flying reptile that Kligman and different paleontologists say was the dimensions of a “small seagull.”
The Smithsonian-led paper, printed Monday within the Proceedings of the Nationwide Academy of Sciences journal, particulars the brand new pterosaur fossil discovery together with a number of others, offering perception into the late Triassic interval.
Ben Kligman
Kligman remembers wanting on the jawbone underneath a microscope on the Smithsonian — the place he’s a Peter Buck postdoctoral fellow and the place the fossil had been despatched — and working by his “Rolodex” of Triassic jaw anatomy, fascinated about what species may have an identical jaw. He needed to resolve the thriller of the place the fragile jawbone belonged.
Via the method of elimination, and considering of the options pterosaurs have that no different animal has, Kligman stated he and different researchers have been capable of conclude that, “Oh yeah, this is definitely a pterosaur — therefore, this is a very important discovery.”
The staff named the pterosaur the Eotephradactylus mcintireae, which suggests “ash-winged dawn goddess.” The species identify references its discoverer, Suzanne McIntire, who volunteered within the Smithsonian’s FossiLab for 18 years.
McIntire found the pterosaur fossil, which had been delivered to the museum from the Petrified Forest Nationwide Park together with 1,200 different particular person fossils, together with bones, tooth, fish scales and coprolites, or fossilized excrement.
Volunteers painstakingly clear every fossil, flag ones of curiosity and carry out different fossil conservation duties. McIntire unearthed the jawbone and seen the tooth have been nonetheless within the bone, making it simpler to determine.
Ben Kligman
The winged reptile — a detailed cousin of dinosaurs and the first animals after bugs to evolve powered flight — would’ve been sufficiently small to comfortably perch on an individual’s shoulder.
“It could’ve sat on your shoulder, like a small seagull,” Kligman stated of the species.
Researchers have been capable of date the fossil again to 209.2 million years in the past — an unusually exact date, Kligman stated, due to the extent of volcanic ash the place the fossil was discovered. The discovering helps fill in a spot within the fossil report that predates the end-Triassic extinction, he stated. Only a few pterosaur fossils exist, Kligman stated. After their extinction, their fragile bones preserved poorly, so pterosaur fossils are continuously incomplete. Additionally they didn’t dwell shut to locations the place fossils are inclined to kind.
Illustration by Brian Engh
“It helps us understand what a pterosaur was and how they became what they would become,” Kligman stated.
Together with the pterosaur, the examine additionally detailed different findings, together with one of many world’s oldest turtle fossils, large amphibians and armored crocodile kin, which lived alongside evolutionary upstarts like frogs, turtles and pterosaurs.
