The discovery of an unusual new species of pterosaur is shaking up the history of the iconic flying reptiles.
That is the conclusion of an international team of researchers, following analysis of a 178-million-year-old fossil found in southern Argentina. The paleontologists have named the new species Melkamter pateko—the genus name of which translates, aptly, to "winged big lizard."
The finding not only pushes back the evolution of the advanced pterosaur group that dominated the skies of the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago) but also suggests they originated not in coastal environments but inland, feeding on flying insects.
The first-ever group of actively flying vertebrates, the pterosaurs first took to the skies some 230 million years ago, nearly 80 million years before the earliest birds arrived on the scene.
They got aloft thanks to thin wing membranes—not dissimilar to those seen in present-day bats—suspended from an extremely elongated fourth finger on each hand. This adaptation for flight became more refined over time. The earliest pterosaurs had only relatively short wings and retained a long tail.
But the subgroup known as the pterodactyloids that evolved later—which included all pterosaurs from the Cretaceous—developed slender, elongated wings while reducing tail length.
The pterodactyloids famously include the largest flying animal ever to have lived, Quetzalcoatlus northropi, which reached nearly 500 pounds and a wingspan of some 36 feet.
The switch from the early pterosaur forms to the pterodactyloids is known to have occurred during the Jurassic period (201.3 million to 145 million years ago). The earliest fossils previously known have been dated back to around 160 million years ago.
However, our understanding of the rise of the pterodactyloids had been based almost exclusively on the fossil record of the Northern Hemisphere, with precious few specimens having been identified from the southern continents.
In their new study, however, paleontologist Alexandra Fernandes of the Bavarian State Collection for Paleontology and Geology and her colleagues present an early pterodactyloid from South America that pushes back the fossil record of this subgroup by some 18 million years.
Melkamter was unearthed from within a mudstone at the Queso Rallado site, which lies about 3½ miles from the village of Cerro Cóndor in Argentina's Chubut province.
The fossil specimen included a partial skull, four vertebrae from the mid-back, one long bone and two of the pterodactyloid's teeth—remains that exhibit several characteristics that indicate the creature is a pterodactyloid.
The location where the specimen was found is also remarkable, the team said.
Unlike most known Jurassic-age pterosaurs, which lived close to the sea and are thought to have preyed upon fish and other marine species, Melkamter was found in an inland setting.
The researchers believe that instead of eating fish and the like, the newly identified pterosaur species likely consumed insects—and that, furthermore, pterodactyloids might have evolved in an inland, rather than coastal, environment.
"It is possible that an early specialization in highly mobile prey such as flying insects contributed to the evolutionary success of the pterodactyloids," Fernandes said in a statement.
She concluded: "This find highlights not only how little we still know about the pterosaurs of the Southern Hemisphere, but also the potential that the southern continents have to improve our understanding of pterosaur evolution."
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Reference
Fernandes, A. E., Pol, D., & Rauhut, O. W. M. (2024). The oldest monofenestratan pterosaur from the Queso Rallado locality (Cañadón Asfalto Formation, Toarcian) of Chubut Province, Patagonia, Argentina. Royal Society Open Science, 11(12), 241238. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.241238
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