by For paleontologist Ben Kligman the question was: is this fragile jawbone a pterosaurus or not?
Other researchers also had questions about the fossil, excavated together with thousands of others for a decades of archaeologically on a remote bone bed in the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. Some thought the bone could have been a mammal, Kligman told CBS News.
Now their new research provides insight into the oldest known flying reptile in Noord -America of which Kligman and other paleontologists say it was the size of a “small seagull”.
The paper led by Smithsonian, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Journal, describes the new Pterosaur Fossil Discovery together with various others, who provide insight into the Late Triassic period.
Kligman remembers that he looked at De Kaakbeen under a microscope at the Smithsonian – where he is a Peter Buck Postdoctoral guy and where the fossil was sent – and by his “Rolodex” of Triassic Jaw Anatomy, to think about which species a similar jaw can have. He wanted to solve the mystery from where the delicate jawbeen heard.
Because of the elimination process and thinking of the characteristics that Pterosaurs have that no other animal has, Kligman said that he and other researchers could conclude that: “Oh yes, this is definitely a pterosaurus – that’s why this is a very important discovery.”
Ben Kligman, a Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellow and Paleontologist in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, with a bonebed in 2025 in Arizona in Arizona Petrified Forest National Park. / Credit: Ben Kligman
The team called the Pterosaur the Eotephradactylus McINTIREAE, which means “Ash-Winged Dawn Goddess”. The name of the species refers to his discoverer, Suzanne Mcintire, who voluntarily presented himself in the Smithsonian’s Fossilab for 18 years.
McINTIRE discovered the Pterosaurus fossil, which was brought from the Petrified Forest National Park to the museum, along with 1200 other individual fossils, including bones, teeth, fish bowls and coprolites, or fossilized droppings.
Volunteers carefully clean every fossil, flags of interesting flags and perform other fossil conservation tasks. McINTIRE discovered the jawbone and noticed that the teeth were still in the bone, making it easier to identify.
Volunteers who work on fossils from a Petrified Forest National Park Botebed in the Fossilab in the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian. / Credit: Ben Kligman
The winged reptile – a close cousin of dinosaurs and the first animals after insects to evolve a driven flight – would have been small enough to sit comfortably on a person’s shoulder.
“It could have been on your shoulder, like a small seagull,” Kligman said about the species.
Researchers were able to date the fossil until 209.2 million years ago – an unusually precise date, Kligman said, because of the level of volcanic axis where the fossil was found. The finding helps to fill in a gap in the fossil record that dates from before the extinction of the end-trias, he said. There are very few pterosaurus fossils, Kligman said. After their extinction, their fragile bones kept poorly, so Pterosaur fossils are often incomplete. They also did not live close to places where fossils tend to form.
The reconstruction of an artist of the fossilized landscape, plants and animals found found in a remote bone in Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona / Credit: Illustration by Brian Engh
“It helps us to understand what a pterosaurus was and how they were what they would be,” said Kligman.
Together with the Pterosaurus, the study also described other findings, including one of the world’s oldest turtle fossils, gigantic amphibians and armored crocodiles family members, who lived alongside evolutionary starters such as frogs, turtles and pterosaurians.
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