Sentences with phrase «pterosaur bones»

«When we arrived at the discovery site, the bones were visible, many pterosaur bones right in front of my eyes,» Manzig told Smithsonian.

It's fortunate to have the beautifully preserved fossil because the potential for preserving pterosaur bones is low, Myers said.

However, a trove uncovered by paleontologists in northwest China is home to hundreds of well - preserved pterosaur bones that will help boost our knowledge of the creatures.

Not exact matches

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.

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.

When the two researchers first caught sight of the embryo's sturdy upper arm bone and extremely long fourth finger, they «immediately recognized it as belonging to a pterosaur,» Zhou recalls.

The cache of more than 200 fossil eggs found with bones of juvenile and adult animals in northwestern China suggests to some researchers that pterosaur parents may have cared for their newly hatched young.

The slow - soaring pterosaur would have landed slowly as well, which might have helped preserve its flight - adapted light bones, unsuited for high impacts.

But enough is preserved to allow comparisons between the bones in the embryos and those of older pterosaurs also preserved, says Alexander Kellner of the National Museum at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, who helped analyze the fossils.

Pterosaurs nested on land but their bones are often recovered from shallow marine rocks.

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.

The bones revealed that the pterosaurs died at different times, which suggests multiple forces — not a single event — were at play.

According to scientists, pterosaurs had an extraordinary adaptation to flight, including pneumatic bones to lighten its weight, and an elongated finger supporting a wing membrane.

The fossil bed found in Brazil contained hundreds of bones from roughly 50 individual pterosaurs, including partial skulls and jawbones, according to the study.

The latest study relies on only a few bones, so it does not provide definitive proof that small pterosaur species existed alongside the larger ones, says Alexander Kellner, a palaeontologist at the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro.