Sentences with phrase «of pterosaur»

«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.

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

Floodwaters from an intense storm may have swept away and buried hundreds of pterosaur eggs in this bone bed, along with the scattered remains of a few adults.

Being soft, most of the pterosaur eggs had flattened during burial and fossilization.

THE largest ever trove of pterosaur eggs and embryos has been found in China.

Colin Palmer, a graduate student at the University of Bristol, arrived at this conclusion by employing his expertise as a turbine engineer to carry out first - of - a kind tests on models of pterosaur wings in a wind tunnel.

Without a living analogue, the mechanics of pterosaur take - off, flight and landing, have been part conjecture and part theory.

This study also offers a slice of pterosaur life history that is out of reach of fossil evidence, suggesting that the reptiles lived within easy access of warm thermal wind currents near open spaces of land or near the ocean.

Now, Palmer's wind tunnel tests with models of the pterosaur wing are a second chapter to this story, filling out the full picture for how these reptiles used their unique limbs to stay in the air.

Tapejara imperator, a Tupi Indian - Latin hybrid name meaning the old emperor, had a gigantic crest that took up five - sixths the area of the pterosaur's nearly three - foot - long, three - foot - high skull.

The crest, which consisted of soft tissue, rises out of a bony ridge in the center of the pterosaur's skull.

As with other evidence of smaller pterosaurs, the fossil specimen is fragmentary and poorly preserved: researchers should check collections more carefully for misidentified or ignored pterosaur material, which may enhance our picture of pterosaur diversity and disparity at this time.»

Happily, enough of the specimen was recovered to determine the approximate age of the pterosaur at the time of its death.

Egg accumulation with 3D embryos provides insight into the life history of a pterosaur.

While working in Mexico, paleontologist Eberhard Frey of the Natural History Museum in Karlsruhe, Germany, discovered the footprints of a pterosaur with a wingspan of at least 59 feet — larger than that of a modern fighter jet.

High - tech analyses of pterosaur skulls show that the first flying vertebrates packed some sophisticated navigational hardware.

To date, only a small handful of pterosaur eggs with a well - preserved 3 - D structure and embryo inside have been found and analyzed — three eggs from Argentina and five from China.

These teeth became entangled with the tough fibres, or aktinofibrils, that reinforced the wing membranes of the pterosaur, Rhamphorhynchus muensteri.

This sparse sample size was dramatically increased upon the discovery of 215 eggs of the pterosaurs species Hamipterus tianshanensis from a Lower Cretaceous site in China.

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

The hollow bones of pterosaurs are notoriously poorly preserved, and larger animals seem to be preferentially preserved in similarly aged Late Cretaceous ecosystems of North America.

The fossils formed about 120 million years ago when disaster struck a group of pterosaurs.

«You've captured the life history of pterosaurs,» Unwin says.

Up until now the fossil record of pterosaurs, the flying reptiles that soared alongside dinosaurs, has been rather poor.

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.

«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.

«He (Kryptodrakon progenitor) fills in a very important gap in the history of pterosaurs,» Andres said.

They also performed a comprehensive analysis of the evolutionary history of pterosaurs using the latest data and other anatomical features.

Competition with early bird species may have contributed to a decline in pterosaurs so that, by the end of the Cretaceous, only large species of pterosaurs still existed.

Some 60 genera of pterosaurs have been discovered, ranging in size from that of a small bird to a wingspan of more than 30 feet.

The first pterosaur fossil was discovered in the late Jurassic Solnhofen limestone in 1784, and since then 29 other kinds of pterosaurs have been found in the Solnhofen site.

Terrorflyers are reminiscent of pterosaurs, having long crests and the absence of forelimbs, but are made more dragon - like through their bulkier bodies and large jaws.

Not exact matches

The weird creatures in the depths of the oceans, the ichthyosaurs, pterosaurs and other extinct species, the enormous varieties of plants, insects, crustaceans, reptiles, fish and mammals — all of this makes us wonder whether chance might not be as good an «explanation» as any for the morphological richness of life.

June 12, 2013 — Brazilian paleontologists Taissa Rodrigues, of the Federal University of Espirito Santo, and Alexander W. A. Kellner, of the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, have just presented the most extensive review yet available of toothed pterosaurs from the Cretaceous of England.

An example of convergent evolution is the similar nature of the flight / wings of insects, birds, pterosaurs, and bats.

In its wake arose a group of egg - laying reptile precursors called archosaurs, the common ancestors of dinosaurs, flying reptiles known as pterosaurs, and crocodiles.

While conducting paleontological research in northeastern Mexico, the scientists came upon sedimentary rock deposited toward the end of the Cretaceous Period that evidenced an enormous diversity of fossils, including the tracks of birds, dinosaurs and pterosaurs.

«For most of the dinosaurs and pterosaurs, this strike no longer had any effect,» explains Prof. Stinnesbeck.

The team compared the thickness of the bones» walls and their resistance to torsion — a twisting force that birds» wings withstand during flapping flight — with similar bones from several dinosaurs, flying reptiles called pterosaurs and modern birds.

Pterosaurs, «winged lizards,» often referred to as «pterodactyls» were flying reptiles of the clade Pterosauria.

Lastly, the fact that a single collection of embryos exhibits a range of developmental stages hints that pterosaurs participated in colonial nesting behavior, the authors say.

Based on growth marks, the team estimates one of the individuals to be at least 2 years old and still growing at the time of its death, supporting the growing body of evidence that pterosaurs had long incubation periods.

The Daohugou Biota makes an immense contribution to our understanding of vertebrate evolution during this period, with such notable creatures as the oldest known gliding mammal, another early mammal that may have swum with a beaver - like tail, the oldest dinosaurs preserved with feathers, and a pterosaur that represents an important transitional form between two major groups.

The pterosaur flew just above the water of the tropical lagoon.

«Hundreds of fossilized eggs shed light on pterosaur development.»

The fish leaped out of the water and grabbed the pterosaur by its left wing as it was flying.

The results reveal that pterosaurs had a giant flocculus, a brain region responsible for keeping track of the body's location and for coordinating the movement of the eyes.

Cunningham believes that a large pterosaur could launch itself without «running and a lot of mad flapping» — but he won't say how, because he's going to publish a paper on it.

The aspiring pilot has the help of Tennessee engineer Jim Cunningham, who has been studying two fossil pterosaurs to figure out just how their wings worked.

A large pterosaur may have had a wingspan of 11 meters, «which made it the size of a light aircraft,» she says.