Shedding new light on life of pterosaurs
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New research on the first complete pterosaur skeleton discovered in China provides more information on pterosaur phylogeny, or evolution, and sheds light on their living habits during the Cretaceous Period more than 100 million years ago.
Dsungaripterus weii, discovered in the Wuerhe region in northwest China鈥檚 Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and made public in 1964, is the first fossilized pterosaur with a nearly complete skeleton found in China. Compared with other pterosaurs, it has unique characteristics on the upper and lower jaws, such as toothless anterior tip tapering, bulbous teeth with a broad and oval base and thick bone walls.
A research team from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has found a large number of Cretaceous terrestrial vertebrate fossils including pterosaurs, dinosaurs, plesiosaurs, crocodiles and turtles in the region.
Over the past 10 years, a new team led by Wang Xiaolin has explored the Mesozoic strata in and around Wuerhe and excavated many fossils of pterosaurs, dinosaurs and their footprints. These fossils increased the diversity of this fauna and provided important material to further studies.
Pterosaurs are the first vertebrates to achieve flight.
They had four extremely elongated phalanges of the ring finger to support their membranes when flying.
Generally, the bone walls in pterosaurs are thin, which allows them to fly but makes them difficult to preserve.
Many pterosaur fossils are almost flattened when preserved.
However, the skull of Dsungaripterus is nearly complete and tri-dimensionally preserved, providing the possibility to study its palatal region, said the researchers.
The study was recently published in the journal PeerJ.
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