2024-06-14 05:56:58
Bones from about 100 million years in the past, discovered within the northeastern a part of Australia, have been recognized as a brand new species of pterosaur, DPA reviews.
In line with a research printed within the journal Scientific Studies/Springer Nature on Wednesday, the bones found in 2021 in western Queensland by Cronosaurus Nook Museum curator Kevin Petersen belong to a brand new genus and species of pterosaur, Haliskia peterseni.
The generic identify Haliskia comes from historical Greek and describes a flying creature that forged a shadow over the ocean, and the species epithet is in honor of the discoverer Petersen.
“With a wingspan of roughly 4.6 metres, Haliskia would have been a formidable predator round 100 million years in the past, when a lot of central western Queensland was underwater, coated by an enormous inland sea,” says analysis staff chief Adele Pentland from Curtin College’s College of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
Pentland introduced that about 22% of the specimen from the Cretaceous interval had been recovered, making it the best-preserved pterosaur ever found in Australia.
“The specimen consists of full decrease jaws, the tip of the higher jaw, 43 enamel, vertebrae, ribs, bones from each wings and a part of a leg,” Pentland stated. “There are additionally very skinny and delicate throat bones, indicating a muscular tongue that helped feed on fish and cephalopods,” Pentland defined.