Adorable 'Porg' Pterosaur Flapped Above Jurassic China

As the sun sets over what will become northern China in 160 million years, something small dives between the trunks of tree ferns, intercepting a dragonfly mid-flight. It lands in the canopy to gulp down its squirming prize. The big-eyed, arrestingly cute critter is a newly described species of pterosaur named …Read more...
Tags: Science, China, Jurassic, Mesozoic, Pterosaur, Megan Jacobs, Geological History Of Earth, Anurognathidae, Batrachognathus, Sinomacrops, Jurassic China

Paleontologists Describe 'Monkeydactyl,' a Pterosaur That May Have Had an Opposable Thumb

A pterosaur with a 3-foot wingspan clambered around trees using claws and an opposable thumb some 160 million years ago in what is now Liaoning, China, according to a study published today in Current Biology. It’s the first pterosaur and oldest known animal to appear to have this trait.Read more...
Tags: Science, Environment, Darwin, Paleontology, Kevin Padian, Evolutionary Biology, Pterosaur, Liaoning China, Thumb, Branches Of Biology, Darwinopterus, Xuanyu Zhou, K Antipollicatus, Fion Waisum Ma, Forelimb, Monkeydactyl

These Mole-Like Critters Lived Under the Feet of Dinosaurs

Before an asteroid completely changed the course of Earth’s evolutionary trajectory, the world was filled with scaled and feathered dinosaurs, web-winged pterosaurs, and, as a new study describes, precursors to modern mammals that eked out existence in burrows they dug into the Cretaceous soil.Read more...
Tags: Science, Earth, Dinosaur, Reptile, Jurassic, Animal Physiology, Mammal, Pterosaur, Geological History Of Earth, Therapsids, Jin Meng, Tritylodontids, Triconodonts, Fossorial, Tritylodon, J Cheni

Flying T-Rex fossils found in Australia, because of course they were

Scientists in Queensland, Australia have pieced together the most complete pterosaur fossil collection yet—a big-headed reptile  with a 12-foot wingspan they've named Ferrodraco lentoni, or "Butch's Iron Dragon." "It’s kind of scary when you think their heads are disproportionately large, it would have had a skull maybe 60cm," Adele Pentland from Swinburne University, the lead author on the study, told The Guardian. "To see it walking around on the ground it would have walked on four legs and lo...
Tags: Post, News, Australia, Wildlife, Rex, Dinosaur, T-rex, Swinburne University, Queensland Australia, Butch, Wild Animals, Pterosaur