Pterosaur bones reveal oldest flying reptile lived in Australia

Pterosaurs, the world’s oldest flying reptiles, flew the skies over Australia 107 million years ago, according to a study published Wednesday.

Paleontologists came to this conclusion after examining two pieces of prehistoric bone extracted from Dinosaur Cove – a fossil site in the Australian state of Victoria – more than three decades ago.

The samples turned out to be the oldest pterosaur remains ever recovered from the country, according to the study published in the scientific journal History Biology on Wednesday.

The giant creature was the first vertebrate to develop the ability to fly and lived alongside dinosaurs during the Mesozoic Era, which began 252 million years ago.

Experts from Curtin University and Museums Victoria, Melbourne, Perth, examined bones from two individuals, including a wing bone belonging to the first juvenile pterosaur ever recorded in Australia.

It turned out that a piece of bone from the pelvis came from a pterosaur with a wingspan of more than two meters. Some pterosaurs had wingspans of over 10 meters.

The Australian specimens were discovered during an excavation at Dinosaur Cove in the 1980s, led by paleontologists Tom Rich and Pat Vickers-Rich of the Museums Victoria Research Institute.

Lead author of the study published on Wednesday, Adele Pentland of Curtin University, told CNN that the discovery showed that the huge creatures flew over Australia tens of millions of years ago, despite the harsh conditions during the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago), when Victoria was in darkness for weeks on end.

“Australia was further south than it is today,” she said, adding that the location where the two specimens were recovered would have been in the polar circle at the time.

Fewer than 25 sets of pterosaur remains belonging to four species have been found in Australia since the 1980s, she said. By comparison, in places like Brazil and Argentina, more than 100 sets have been recovered at individual sites, she added.

Pentland, a PhD student, attributed the three decades it took to confirm the current specimens to a lack of enthusiasm for the species in the country, until she caught them and “finally gave them their moment in the sun.”

In a statement, Rich, from the Museums Victoria Research Institute, said it was “wonderful” to see the excavation work done at Dinosaur Cove in the 1980s pay off.

At the time, volunteers spent years digging a 200-foot tunnel into a seaside cliff where the bones were found.

“These two fossils were the result of intensive work by more than 100 volunteers over a decade,” he added.