Feb. 11, 2008 -- A tiny, toothless pterodactyl with bat-like wings, bird-like claws and a sharp, pointy beak has just been identified from a remarkably well-preserved Chinese fossil, according to a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
According to the research team that discovered the sparrow-sized flying reptile, named Nemicolopterus crypticus, the pterosaur could be a record-breaker.
It's "the smallest arboreal pterosaur, the smallest toothless pterosaur and the smallest Cretaceous pterosaur in the world," co-author Xiaolin Wang told Discovery News.
Wang, a paleontologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, explained that the pterodactyl's features indicate it fed on insects while living in the canopies of ancient forests. Its beak would have been perfectly suited for grabbing bugs, while its curved claws would have helped it hold onto trees.
The research team found the specimen, which only lacks part of its wings, in a slab of sedimentary rock at Jiufotang Formation in northeastern China. The rock and fossil dating reveal that the pterodactyl would have been flying around prehistoric Chinese forests 125 to 120 million years ago.
Alexander Kellner, another co-author of the paper, said the petite pterosaur only had a 9.8-inch wingspan. Because the specimen is so small, especially in relation to other known pterodactyl species with wingspans up to 33 feet, the researchers at first wondered if it might have been a baby. The scientists, however, ruled that out, since all of its bones were well developed.
The fossil was so well preserved that it includes "portions of yellow-colored matrix" surrounding some parts along the bones and particularly near where the reptile's stomach would have been.
Kellner, a paleontologist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, told Discovery News, "I wish (the yellow matter) to be its last meal!"
Such a find would be extremely rare, since very little direct evidence exists for dinosaur-era food chains. Another possibility is that the yellow matter could be the remains of decomposed soft tissues, Wang said. The researchers hope to solve the mystery in the near future.
One thing that is becoming clearer is the relationship between pterosaurs, dinosaurs and birds.
"To make a very, very long story short, pterosaurs are regarded as brothers and sisters of dinosaurs," Kellner explained. "That means they have a shared common ancestor, but each one went along a different evolutionary line-one stayed on the ground and the other learned how to fly."
Regarding birds, Kellner said, "Among scientists, there is a sort of a consensus that birds are modified dinosaurs. In other words, some dinosaurs eventually learned how to fly and that is when birds originated. From this picture, you can see that pterosaurs and birds are quite different and are not directly related."
Lawrence Witmer, an associate professor of anatomy in Ohio University's College of Osteopathic Medicine who has extensively studied pterosaurs, agrees about the distinctiveness of these various animal groups, but puts greater emphasis on connections across branches of the dino family tree.
"Pterosaurs and birds developed flight independently, but they're fairly closely related -- birds are dinosaurs and pterosaurs are close cousins of dinosaurs," Witmer said. "We can compare pterosaurs and birds to test hypotheses on how evolutionarily similar, but still quite distinct, animals adapted to life in the air."
Pterosaurs became extinct at around the same time non-avian dinosaurs bit the dust. Kellner and his team think volcanic gases led to the demise of the newly identified pterodactyl, as well as other animals, at the Chinese site.
Modern birds, which recent genetic data suggest first emerged 100 million years ago, somehow survived the K/T mass extinction event 65 million years ago and have been with us ever since.
The mini pterodactyl, however, "opens a new chapter in the evolutionary history of flying creatures," Kellner said.
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