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Sahara Pterosaur Bonanza!
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26-05-2010 7:22pm#1An expedition to the Sahara desert led by Nizar Ibrahim of UCD has lead to the fdiscovery of three types of pterosaur, one entirely new to science and quite large too...'This pterosaur is distinguished from all others by its lance-shaped lower jaw which had no teeth and looked rather like the beak of a heron,' says Nizar Ibrahim, a PhD research scholar from University College Dublin, who led the expedition and is the lead author on the scientific paper.
'During the excavation, we also discovered a partial neck vertebra that probably belonged to the same animal, inferring a wing span of about six metres.'
The scientists have named the new pterosaur Alanqa saharica from the Arabic word 'Al Anqa' meaning Phoenix, a mythological flying creature that dies in a fire and is reborn from the ashes of that fire.
On the same expedition, and in the same region as where the fossils of Alanqa saharica were uncovered, the scientists also discovered fossils of two other previously identified types of pterosaur. This suggests that several types of pterosaurs lived alongside one another in the same region at the time, each probably specialising in a different ecological niche.
Full article here.
Image by Davide Bonadonna1
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