The earliest ancestors of pterosaurs were a species of small, wingless reptile called lagerpetids that lived 237 million years ago, a new study reveals. Computed tomographic (CT) scans of fossils reveal similarities between the winged pterosaurs and wingless lagerpetids, which had characteristically long hind-legs. Although one could fly and the other couldn’t, pterosaurs and lagerpetids shared some … Read more
Fossil ‘shark spines’ unearthed in an English phosphate mine a century ago are actually jaw fragments of 100 million-year-old toothless pterosaurs — including an unknown species The fossils were collected in the Fens by Victorian miners and sold for profit They came from a rock formation that dates back to the early Cenomanian The palaeontologists … Read more
Chinese pterodactyl wings its way to the UK: Fossil of a toothless pterosaur commonly found in China and Brazil is discovered on the Isle of Wight The specimen was found by a dog walker in Sandown Bay on the island’s coast University of Portsmouth palaeontologists identified it as a toothless jawbone The fossil — ‘Wightia … Read more