• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

One Of The Largest Pterosaur Fossils Ever Found Is Rewriting Their Evolutionary History

January 24, 2025 by Deborah Bloomfield

Scientists studying one of the largest pterosaur fossils ever found and identified have concluded that these animals were likely more diverse in the Jurassic than the fossil record suggests. Armed with what they described as a “field-defining” discovery from the Isle of Skye, the species Dearc sgiathanach, they uncovered groundbreaking insights into their functional anatomy and evolutionary adaptations. 

ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE

This remarkable specimen “alters the way we perceive pterosaur evolution, suggesting these flying reptiles reached notable sizes and diverse morphologies in advance of the Late Jurassic”, the authors write in their paper.

The fanged jaws of this 170-million-year-old Jurassic pterosaur were first spotted by PhD student Amelia Penny poking out of a rock on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, back in 2017. After battling tides with diamond-tipped saws to retrieve it, the team brought the fossil to the University of Edinburgh for study.

The name Dearc sgiathanach (pronounced jark ski-an-ach) is Scottish Gaelic and pays homage to the Isle of Skye where it was found, with the double meaning of “winged reptile” and “reptile from Skye”. As the largest pterosaur of the Jurassic period known to science, it’s expected to have had a wingspan over 2.5 meters (over 8.2 feet) – and yet, despite this massive size, scientists believe Dearc could’ve got much bigger.

Dearc is one of the large Jurassic pterosaurs that’s actually well preserved, we can look at its bone shape to infer how it was capable of flight despite its large size and how its anatomy changed to accommodate this.

Natalia Jagielska

A peek at the growth rings inside its bones revealed that it was a juvenile subadult and not yet fully grown when it died. What D. sgiathanach can tell us about pterosaurs in a broader sense is that these flying reptiles were reaching large sizes earlier than previously expected for this geological period. 

It was once thought that pterosaurs were quite restricted in size from the Triassic through to the Jurassic, before supersizing in the Cretaceous alongside a diverse range of birds. Instead, Dearc supports the theory that pterosaurs were reaching larger body sizes and wingspans greater than 2 meters as early, if not earlier, as the Middle Jurassic (around 174–161 million years ago).

pterosaurs fishing for squid

These flying reptiles had interlocking fangs that may have made it easier to grasp squid.

Image Credit: Illustration by Natalia Jagielska / N Jagielska et al 2025, BMC Ecology and Evolution

A closer look at the fossils using photography and X-ray microtomography revealed evidence of scarring from muscle attachments on the surface of the deltopectoral crest, suggesting Dearc had large pectoral muscles for flying and hunting. The research also identified a cluster of interlocking fangs, an adaptation that could’ve come in handy for snatching squid from the ocean. 

It seems there was a mass diversification in pterosaur morphologies between the Lower and Middle Jurassic. As we adjust our thinking on pterosaur evolution, there could well be more well-preserved specimens to be found elsewhere in the world that could fill gaps in the fossil record.

“Pterosaurs were the largest vertebrates to achieve flight, with largest specimens in Cretaceous (almost 100 million years later than Dearc) taking to the skies,” the study’s first author, paleontologist Natalia Jagielska, told IFLScience. “Dearc is one of the large Jurassic Pterosaurs that’s actually well preserved, we can look at its bone shape to infer how it was capable of flight despite its large size and how its anatomy changed to accommodate this.”

“We discovered powerful depressions excavated by muscle attachments in its humerus, responsible for flight. Its neck also sported supportive structures to keep the large head in place.”

ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE

The continued examination of this remarkably preserved fossil continues to bring us closer to the true story of how pterosaurs took to the skies despite, in some cases, being as tall as a giraffe. Jagielska next hopes to study how their soft flight membranes behaved and evolved as part of her new research post at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

A big week for pterosaur news, it seems, as another study recently described an incredibly rare: a neck bone of a young Azhdarchid with a bite mark. Who was behind the 76-million-year-old crime? We spoke to the scientists to find out.

The study is published in the journal BMC Ecology and Evolution.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Cricket-Manchester test likely to be postponed after India COVID-19 case
  2. EU to attend U.S. trade meeting put in doubt by French anger
  3. Soccer-West Ham win again, Leicester and Napoli falter
  4. Lacking Company, A Dolphin In The Baltic Is Talking To Himself

Source Link: One Of The Largest Pterosaur Fossils Ever Found Is Rewriting Their Evolutionary History

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Single Gene Swap “Transfers A Behavior” Between Two Species For The First Time
  • Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Has A Rare “Anti-Tail”, New Observations Confirm
  • Asteroid Apophis: Animation Shows Asteroid’s Nail-Biting Close Approach To Earth In 2029
  • Titan Breaks A Key Chemistry Rule: What That Means For Alien Life
  • Scientists Studied “Chicago Rat Hole” – They Have Bad News, The South Atlantic’s Magnetic Field Weak Spot Is Growing, And Much More This Week
  • Could This Be The Real Reason Humans Survived And Neanderthals Died Out?
  • Newly Discovered Snail Species Named After Studio Ghibli Co-Founder Is A Hairy Beauty
  • 2025 SC79 Is The Second-Fastest Asteroid Ever Found – And Only The Second Within Venus’ Orbit
  • When Red Devil Spiders Arrived On A New Island, Their Genome Dramatically Shrank In Half
  • Is This The World’s Oldest Story? Ancient Human Tale About The Seven Sisters May Be From 100,000 BCE
  • This Pill Is Actually A Tiny Printer That Repairs Internal Injuries Using Biocompatible Ink
  • “This Is Amazing”: Scientists Have Found Evidence Of A Long-Lost World Deep Within The Earth
  • From The Shiniest World To Lava And Eternal Darkness, These Are The Weirdest Known Planets
  • Do Sharks Have Bones?
  • The Zombie Awakens: A Volcano Is Showing “First Signs” Of Unrest After 700,000 Years Of Quiet
  • Two Of The World’s Biggest Earthquakes Seem To Be Synched Together
  • California Has A New State Snake, And It’s A 1.6-Meter-Long Giant
  • Experimental Nanoparticle “Super-Vaccines” Stop Breast, Pancreatic, And Skin Cancers In Their Tracks
  • New Nightmare Fuel Unlocked: Watch The First Known Capture Of A Shrew By A False Widow Spider
  • Peculiar Glow In The Milky Way Might Be Dark Matter Signature
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version