Itty bitty pterosaur
A cool new pterosaur fossil was reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Like so many interesting fossils of recent years, it's come out of China's Liaoning Province, which must be one big Lagerstatte. Unlike previously discovered pterosaurs, it had strongly curled toes, which indicate that it spent some of its time in trees, clutching cylindrical branches. It's small, too: really small, with a wingspan of only 25 cm, about the same as a barn swallow. Even so, it appears to be related (in a basal, primitive way) to the largest pterosaurs that ever lived, giants like Quetzalcoatlus. Reference:
Xiaolin Wang, Alexander W. A. Kellner, Zhonghe Zhou, and Diogenes de Almeida Campos (2008). Discovery of a rare arboreal forest-dwelling flying reptile (Pterosauria, Pterodactyloidea) from China. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. February 11, 2008: 0707728105v1-0.
Image from New Scientist's article on the find.
3 Comments:
Would it be horribly unscientific to say that the itty bitty pterosaur is really cute?
Nah.
Now can we clone them so I can have a "Littlest Pterosaur" to run around my house?
Actually, judging by the artist's interpretation of what they eat, I could really use one around my house, too: every winter, I get dozens of ladybugs inside my apartment. I'm not sure why, but it's very consistent. Even my cat Lola gets sick of chasing them, they're so plentiful. I need a ladybug-munching pterosaur to clean house.
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