Miniature Flying Reptile that Lived 120 million Years Ago Unearthed in China

A new species of miniature flying reptile -a mini-pterodactyl- with a wingspan of only 10 inches that lived more than 120 million years ago has been unearthed in China. The newfound creature might provide clues to the evolution of later, more massive pterosaurs, the largest of which measured nearly 40 feet (12 meters) from wing tip to wing tip. The animals thrived even as Earth's tectonic forces split the supercontinent Pangaea into multiple continents and oceans about 200 million years ago.

Xu Xing, one of China's leading dinosaur hunters, said that the area where the mini-pterosaur was found was once dotted with active volcanoes that preserved a vast array of ancient species in ash about 120 million years ago.

This is "one of the smallest pterosaurs known," said co-discoverer Alexander Kellner, an adjunct professor at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Kellner and colleagues describe the new species in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Pterosaurs, which had wings formed of skin rather than feathers, first appeared about 215 million years ago and are believed to be the first flying vertebrates.

Pterosaurs had evolved into many shapes and sizes by the time they went extinct—along with the dinosaurs—about 65 million years ago.

The tiny pterosaur, a small, toothless reptile with curved foot bones that are similar to those of birds, was discovered by a  team of Chinese and Brazilian paleontologists found the N. crypticus fossil preserved in the fine siltstone of an ancient waterway in northeastern China. The feet indicate that the animal was adapted to living in trees, Kellner said. It likely darted across the dinosaur-dominated forests and lakes of the early Cretaceous period while feasting on insects, he added.

The largest of the pterosaurs, Quetzalcoatlus, lived about 85 million years ago and "is regarded as the largest flying animal of all time," Kellner said. The recently unearthed fossil therefore "opens a new chapter on the evolutionary history of this group of volant [flying] reptiles," he said.

Posted by Casey Kazan.

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