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150-million-year post-mortem reveals baby pterosaurs perished in a violent storm
University of Leicester researchers found baby pterosaurs with wingspans under 8 inches died from storm-induced wing fractures and drowning, with rapid burial enabling exceptional fossil preservation.
- On September 5, University of Leicester paleontologists revealed the cause of death for two baby pterosaurs, publishing their results in Current Biology.
- Storm reconstructions indicate wind gusts twisted wings and caused humerus fractures, while storm-driven waves and mudslides drowned injured hatchlings in the Solnhofen lagoon, rapidly burying them.
- The specimens, nicknamed Lucky and Lucky II, display near-identical clean, slanted humerus breaks—one left, one right—with wingspans of about 7.9 inches, found about 50 miles south of Nuremberg.
- The team says the trauma offers direct evidence that some pterosaur hatchlings could fly soon after hatching, helping settle a long-standing debate and explaining Solnhofen fossil record's storm-driven bias, researchers at University of Leicester conclude.
- Remarkably, researchers note such fragile bones rarely survive, making this find exceptional; similar storms likely explain many other juvenile pterosaur remains, while larger adult pterosaurs more often survived or were not preserved.
13 Articles
13 Articles
In a scientific work on fossils found in Germany, which was published today by paleontologists at the University of Leicester, it details how nature sealed the fate of these two little jurassic offspring
Baby Pterosaurs Killed in Violent Storm Solve 150-Million-Year Mystery
Tiny bones locked in stone for millions of years have finally told their sad story. The 150-million-year-old fossils belong to a pair of pterosaur hatchlings, both of whom appear to have perished in a spectacularly violent weather event, paleontologists have now discovered. What makes this discovery remarkable isn't just that researchers were able to reconstruct the way they died; it's also that such delicate bones were preserved at all. Related…
NewScientist
Anti-Aging, Acupuncture and Health NewsBaby pterosaurs could fly right after hatching – but crashed in storms
Two fossils found in Germany show very young pterodactyls with arm bones thought to have been broken in flight, probably because of severe tropical cyclones
Baby pterosaur skeletons reveal a tragic demise
150 million years ago, a destructive tropical storm blew across present-day Germany and took the lives of a pair of unfortunate baby pterosaurs (Pterodactylus). However, the wild weather created the perfect preservation conditions for paleontologists to study the dynamic duo. Their findings, published on September 5 in the journal Current Biology, are helping rewrite our understanding of ancient European ecosystems and the animals that inhabited…
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