Fossils discovered thirty years ago in Victoria turned out to be pterosaurs, the earliest known vertebrates to have truly developed the ability to fly. After examining the fossils, the researchers confirmed: Australia’s oldest flying reptile took to the skies about 107 million years ago.
Paleontologists have analyzed bone samples from two separate pterosaurs, the oldest winged reptiles, originally discovered more than 30 years ago. One of the specimens, a small wing bone taken from juvenile pterosaurs, is the first reported specimen from Australia. The other, a partial pelvic bone, comes from a pterosaur that had a wingspan of more than two metres. Bones from 107 million years ago.They were first discovered in the 1980s at Dinosaur Cove near Cape Otway in southern Victoria by a team led by Dr Tom Rich and Professor Pat Vickers Rich of the Victoria Museum Research Institute. But so far it has never been written, which has now been replaced by Historical Biology In a scientific study published in the journal
Pterosaurs are known on all continents, including Antarctica; And although they are both primitive and reptilian, pterosaurs differed from flying dinosaurs – said the lead author of the research, Adele Pentland, of Curtin University Watchman online portal.
Pentland is doing PhD work on pterosaurs, and in 2019 he named a new species of reptile, Ferrodraco lentoni, which is also the most complete Australian pterosaur ever found. Until now, he has been unable to determine the exact species of the two pterosaur specimens from Cape Otway, which were found unusually well at the site of Paleolatum High.
When these pterosaurs lived, Australia was part of the great southern continent of Gondwana Pentland explained. – The state of Victoria could have been much further south than it is today and would have been within the Arctic Circle.
He added that sedimentary geology shows that these animals likely lived in the dark for weeks, if not months, throughout the year.
According to the researchers, in the future it would be nice to have an answer to the question whether pterosaurs survived extreme conditions or did they migrate?
In Australia, four species of pterosaurs have been described so far based on fossils found in central-west Queensland.
