News
Largest Flying Reptile Discovered
April 05, 2009, 7:53PM MT
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New species uncovered
New species uncovered
By Jill Mullen – Best Friends Network Volunteer
On December 3rd 2008, the BBC News Channel online carried an amazing story covering the discovery of a new fossil species. Mr. Witton, a scientist at the University of Portsmouth, made this stunning discovery.
The massive flying reptile, a pterosaur that has been named Lacusovagus - which means Lake Wanderer - would have had a five-meter wingspan, that's the size of a family car!
The skull, recovered from a lake in northern Brazil, lay for several years in a museum before being identified as the first toothless pterosaur ever found outside China. Soaring through the skies 115 million years before its discovery, scientists think that the wide skull may suggest an appetite for quite large prey.
Mr. Witton's findings were published in The Journal of Paleontology in November 2008.
Illustration is of a zhenjiangopterus from John Conway / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zhenjiangopterus_jconway.jpg.
Posted By Barbara Silverman