North American pterosaur could sit on your shoulder
The winged reptiles that once roamed the skies over North America 209 million years ago could have easily made it to Europe–and not because of their wings. All of Earth’s continents were still connected in the supercontinent Pangaea. Now, a team led by researchers and volunteers from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History have uncovered the oldest known pterosaur in North America. The new sea-gull size pterosaur Eotephradactylus mcintireae is detailed in a study published July 7 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and also includes one of the world’s oldest turtle fossils. “Our discoveries from this study show how paleontologists have only just started scratching the surface of the fossil record,” study co-author and paleontologist Ben T. Kligman tells Popular Science. In the run up to mass extinction The fossils were uncovered at a remote bonebed in present-day Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park. They date back to...