An
international team of researchers is reporting that a 162-million-year-old
fossil found in China represents a previously unknown species of the
prehistoric flying reptiles. They dubbed the prehistoric beast Kyrptodrakon progenitor and say it's the oldest and most
primitive pterodactyloid ever found.
Pterodacytloids
were a kind of pterosaurs, flying reptiles that existed during
the Mesozoic Era (252 million to 66 million years ago) and ranged in size from
paper airplanes to fighter jets. The discovery pushes the era of
pterodactyloids back by at least five million years.
"He
(Kryptodrakon progenitor) fills in a very important gap in the history of
pterosaurs," University of South Florida paleontologist Brian
Andres, a member of the research team, said in a written statement. "With
him, they could walk and fly in whole new ways."
For their
research, Andres and his colleagues examined a fossil discovered in 2001 in the
Shishugou Formation, a famous region of rocks in northwest China. The formation
is known for its "dinosaur death pits," in which many dinosaurs got
trapped in quicksand and stacked one on top of the other, leaving behind a
trove of fossil fragments.
"Kryptodrakon
is the second pterosaur species we've discovered in the Shishugou Formation and
deepens our understanding of this unusually diverse Jurassic ecosystem,"
Andres' collaborator, Dr. James Clark, a biology
professor at George Washington University, said in the statement.
And this
location even influenced how the fossil was named "krypto" (hidden)
"drakon" (dragon) since it was found in an area near where the movie
"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," was filmed.
How did the researchers link this fossil to
pterodactyloids? They focused on the fossil's wing metacarpal, one of the palm
bones, and found it had signature characteristics of a pterodactyl -- it was
longer and more slender compared to the same bone on other pterosaurs.
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