Science Alert has a story about a huge pterosaur discovery in Australia. Pterosaurs seem to be in the news lately and this one is called "Iron Dragon", Ferrodraco lentoni. Discovered in the Winton area of central western Queensland, it had a wingspan of about 4 meters (13 feet). This animal lived about 96 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period. The paper describing this specimen appeared in the journal Scientific Reports.
The newly discovered species, which my colleagues and I have named Ferrodraco lentoni, had a wingspan of about 4 metres (13 feet). It lived around 96 million years ago, and was surprisingly similar to other pterosaurs from England, suggesting that these huge flying reptiles could traverse the globe with relative ease.
Pterosaurs are quite rare in the fossil record, as their bones are hollow and the outer bone in most instances is only 1 millimetre thick. Only 15 pterosaur specimens have ever been scientifically described from Australia, many of them incomplete.
Until recently, only two species of Australian pterosaur had been described: Mythunga camara and Aussiedraco molnari, both based on fossil skull fragments.
Although more complete fossils of similar pterosaurs are known from Brazil and China, until this discovery, our understanding of the pterosaurs that lived in Australia during the Cretaceous period was limited.
