Sentences with phrase «small pterosaur»

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.

They record the moment a small pterosaur came into land, says Kevin Padian at the University of California, Berkeley.

Elizabeth Martin - Silverstone added: «The absence of small juveniles of large species — which must have existed — in the fossil record is evidence of a preservational bias against small pterosaurs in the Late Cretaceous.

It adds to a growing set of evidence that the Late Cretaceous period was not dominated by large or giant species, and that smaller pterosaurs may have been well represented in this time.

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.»

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.

This is the smallest pterosaur discovered from the Late Cretaceous (Kreh - TAY - shius)-- and by a lot, notes Elizabeth Martin - Silverstone.

Not exact matches

During this struggle the pterosaur drowned with the small fish it had caught halfway down its throat.

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.

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.

The specimen thus seems to be a genuinely small species, and not just a baby or juvenile of a larger pterosaur type.»

It's rare to find pterosaur fossils at all because their skeletons were lightweight and easily damaged once they died, and the small ones are the rarest of all.

Pterosaurs walked on all four limbs, and Habib has developed an anatomical model to explore how they might have launched themselves using their small hind limbs and larger «arms» which formed part of their wings.

Witton and Habib say that wings of the giant pterosaurs were so powerful that the vaulting mechanism could have launched them from a small clearing without the need for a «runway» or a cliff to leap from.

With throats and jaws much wider than other pterosaurs, they could have swallowed small dinosaurs whole.

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.

Pterosaurs, a group that includes pterodactyls, ranged in size from a sparrow to a small airplane.

Perhaps the mammals were feeding on worms and grubs, the small carnivorous dinosaurs were after the mammals, and the pterosaurs could have been hunting both the mammals and the small dinosaurs.

The other dinosaur tracks include: a sauropod, or long - necked plant - eater; small theropods, crow - sized carnivorous dinosaurs closely related to the Velociraptor and Tyrannosaurus rex; and pterosaurs, a group of flying reptiles that included pterodactyls.

Launching on four legs, the pterosaur would have flapped its wings till it caught these small pockets of warm air rising from ocean or hot land, and then coasted easily on these for several hours.

His colleague Xiaolin Wang at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing has now found 215 eggs from the pterosaur Hamipterus tianshanensis, each the size of a small chicken egg.

Great plant - eating dinosaurs roaming the earth, feeding on lush ferns and palm - like cycads and bennettitaleans... smaller but vicious carnivores stalking the great herbivores... oceans full of fish, squid, and coiled ammonites, plus great ichthyosaurs and long - necked plesiosaurs... vertebrates taking to the air, like the pterosaurs and the first birds.

Newly discovered pterosaur fossils suggest a smaller species of the dinosaur order that could have implications for the extinction that took place at the end of the Cretaceous period.

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.