Sentences with phrase «new pterosaur»

Myers identified the new pterosaur from a partial upper jaw — specifically the tip of the blunt snout, or rostrum.

Lead author of the study Elizabeth Martin - Silverstone, a Palaeobiology PhD Student at the University of Southampton, said: «This new pterosaur is exciting because it suggests that small pterosaurs were present all the way until the end of the Cretaceous, and weren't outcompeted by birds.

Not exact matches

An invaluable collection of more than 200 eggs is providing new insights into the development and nesting habits of pterosaurs.

It is not clear if these giant finds represent a new species in the pterosaur family, which includes pterodactyls and crested pteradons.

The specimen is unusual as most pterosaurs from the Late Cretaceous were much larger with wingspans of between four and eleven metres (the biggest being as large as a giraffe, with a wingspan of a small plane), whereas this new specimen had a wingspan of only 1.5 metres.

Previous studies suggest that the Late Cretaceous skies were only occupied by much larger pterosaur species and birds, but this new finding, which is reported in the Royal Society journal Open Science, provides crucial information about the diversity and success of Late Cretaceous pterosaurs.

Finding fossilized eggs containing 3 - D embryos opens a new window into pterosaur development, says coauthor Alexander Kellner, a vertebrate paleontologist at Museu Nacional / Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.

New fossils now indicate some giant pterosaurs probably did dine on bigger prey, such as dwarf dinosaurs the size of a small horse, 70 million years ago on an island that became modern - day Transylvania.

New fossils uphold that view, challenging a recent consensus that all pterosaurs were more like overgrown cranes that preyed on rat - sized baby dinosaurs.

Examples of adaptive radiation can be found in: the Galapagos finches, Australia's marsupials, Hawaii's honeycreepers and fruit flies, Madagascar's carnivores and other mammals, New Zealand's birds and the prehistoric flying pterosaurs.

A spectacular fossil find is providing tantalizing new clues about the habits of pterosaurs, ancient flying reptiles that lived at the same times as dinosaurs.

Nevertheless, identification of the new toothy Texas pterosaur deepens a mystery surrounding the flying reptiles: There still is no evidence of close ties between North American and South American pterosaur populations, he said.

«New North American pterosaur is a Texan, but flying reptile's closest cousin is English: New species marks only the third toothed pterosaur identified from North America's Cretaceous — each one discovered in North Texas.»

The new Texas native, Cimoliopterus dunni, is only the third pterosaur species with teeth from the Cretaceous of North America.

But her team's new find, she says, may mean that, «pterosaurs were doing better than we thought.»

One of the new study's authors illustrates what he suspects the tiny pterosaurs might have looked like.

«These fossils shed new light on the reproductive strategy, ontogeny, and behavior of pterosaurs,» researchers wrote in their report,» published online Thursday in the journal Current Biology.

«This finding represents the earliest and most primitive pterodactyloid pterosaur, a flying reptile in a highly specialized group that includes the largest flying organisms,» Chris Liu, program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Earth Sciences and author of the new study, said in a statement.

The latest findings are based on the discovery of a new species of pterosaur from the Patagonia region of South America.

«They have plenty of new material to determine that this is a new species of pterosaur,» says Michael Habib, a palaeontologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.