The pterosaur Dearc sgiathanach flies through the Jurassic skies of what is now Scotland. (Image credit: Natalia Jagielska)
The Guardian has a story about the recent discovery of a large Jurassic pterosaur. Described as the largest Jurassic pterosaur, the animal is named Dearc sgiathanach and had a wingspan of about 2.5 meters. It lived about 170 million years ago on what is now the Isle of Skye. Prof. Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh, who's hometown is Ottawa, IL, is one of the co-authors of a paper published in the journal Current Biology.
Fossil hunters in Scotland say they have recovered the remains of the world’s largest Jurassic pterosaur, adding the creature – known informally as a pterodactyl – also boasted a mouthful of sharp teeth for spearing and trapping fish.
With a wingspan of about 2.5 metres or larger – around the size of the largest flying birds today, such as the wandering albatross – the creature sheds new light on the evolution of pterosaurs, given they were not thought to have reached such a size until about 25m years later.
“When this thing was living about 170m years ago, it was the largest animal that had ever flown, at least that we know of,” said Prof Steve Brusatte, a co-author of the research from the University of Edinburgh.
“We’ve really dragged back in time the evolution of large pterosaurs,” he said.
Brusatte added previous finds suggested pterosaurs did not grow much larger than about 1.6-1.8 metres in wingspan during the Jurassic, only reaching much larger sizes during the Cretaceous period.
“There were pterosaurs living at the end of the Cretaceous when the asteroid hit that were the size of fighter jets,” said Brusatte, referring to the mass extinction 66m years ago that wiped out non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs and myriad other creatures.
