For paleontologist Ben Kligman, the query was: Is that this fragile jawbone a pterosaur or not?
Now, their new analysis gives perception into North America’s oldest recognized flying reptile that Kligman and different paleontologists say was the dimensions of a “small seagull.”
The Smithsonian-led paper, printed Monday within the Proceedings of the Nationwide Academy of Sciences journal, particulars the brand new pterosaur fossil discovery together with a number of others, offering perception into the late Triassic interval.
Ben Kligman, a Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellow and paleontologist on the Smithsonian’s Nationwide Museum of Pure Historical past, quarrying a bonebed in Arizona’s Petrified Forest Nationwide Park in 2025.
Ben Kligman
Kligman remembers trying on the jawbone beneath a microscope on the Smithsonian — the place he’s a Peter Buck postdoctoral fellow and the place the fossil had been despatched — and working by means of his “Rolodex” of Triassic jaw anatomy, fascinated by what species might have an identical jaw. He needed to resolve the thriller of the place the fragile jawbone belonged.
By means of the method of elimination, and considering of the options pterosaurs have that no different animal has, Kligman stated he and different researchers have been in a position to conclude that, “Oh yeah, this is definitely a pterosaur — therefore, this is a very important discovery.”
The crew named the pterosaur the Eotephradactylus mcintireae, which suggests “ash-winged dawn goddess.” The species identify references its discoverer, Suzanne McIntire, who volunteered within the Smithsonian’s FossiLab for 18 years.
McIntire found the pterosaur fossil, which had been delivered to the museum from the Petrified Forest Nationwide Park together with 1,200 different particular person fossils, together with bones, enamel, fish scales and coprolites, or fossilized excrement.
Volunteers painstakingly clear every fossil, flag ones of curiosity and carry out different fossil conservation duties. McIntire unearthed the jawbone and observed the enamel have been nonetheless within the bone, making it simpler to establish.
Volunteers engaged on fossils from a Petrified Forest Nationwide Park bonebed within the FossiLab on the Smithsonian’s Nationwide Museum of Pure Historical past.
Ben Kligman
The winged reptile — an in depth cousin of dinosaurs and the primary animals after bugs to evolve powered flight — would’ve been sufficiently small to comfortably perch on an individual’s shoulder.
“It could’ve sat on your shoulder, like a small seagull,” Kligman stated of the species.
Researchers have been in a position to date the fossil again to 209.2 million years in the past — an unusually exact date, Kligman stated, due to the extent of volcanic ash the place the fossil was discovered. The discovering helps fill in a niche within the fossil report that predates the end-Triassic extinction, he stated. Only a few pterosaur fossils exist, Kligman stated. After their extinction, their fragile bones preserved poorly, so pterosaur fossils are ceaselessly incomplete. Additionally they didn’t stay near locations the place fossils are likely to kind.
An artist’s reconstruction of the fossilized panorama, crops and animals discovered preserved in a distant bonebed in Petrified Forest Nationwide Park in Arizona
Illustration by Brian Engh
“It helps us understand what a pterosaur was and how they became what they would become,” Kligman stated.
Together with the pterosaur, the examine additionally detailed different findings, together with one of many world’s oldest turtle fossils, large amphibians and armored crocodile family, which lived alongside evolutionary upstarts like frogs, turtles and pterosaurs.
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