Pterodactylus antiquus, DMA-JP-2014/004, from the Upper Jurassic (Kimmeridgian) Torleite Formation of Painten; overview photograph. Credit: Augustin et al.
Phys.org has a story about the oldest Pterodactylus ever found. This specimen was found in 2014 near Painten in central Bavaria. The animal lived about 152 million years ago, which is about a million years older than all other Pterodactylus specimens. All the details were published in a recent paper in the journal Fossil Record.
"The rocks of the quarry, which yielded the new Pterodactylus specimen, consist of silicified limestone that has been dated to the upper Kimmeridgian stage (around 152 million years ago)", explains Felix Augustin of the University of Tübingen, who is the lead author of the study. "Previously, Pterodactylus had only been found in younger rocks of southern Germany belonging to the Tithonian stage that follows after the Kimmeridgian."
The specimen is a complete, well-preserved skeleton of a small-sized individual. "Only a very small portion of the left mandible as well as of the left and right tibia is missing. Otherwise, the skeleton is nearly perfectly preserved with every bone present and in its roughly correct anatomical position," the researchers write in their study.
With a 5-cm-long skull, the Painten Pterodactylus represents a rare "sub-adult" individual.
"Generally, the Pterodactylus specimens are not evenly distributed across the full size range but predominantly fall into distinct size-classes that are separated by marked gaps. The specimen from Painten is a rare representative of the first gap between the small and large sizes," explains Augustin.
