Meet "Phoenix," a new pterosaur that once flew over what is now the Sahara desert.
(An artist's impression of Alanqa saharica by Davide Bonadonna)
The giant flying reptile, also known as a pterodactyl, lived 95 million years ago and is described in the latest issue of the journal PLoS ONE. Its scientific name is Alanqa saharica, which basically means "Phoenix of the Sahara" in Arabic. The Phoenix was a mythological flying creature that died in a fire and was reborn from the ashes of that fire.
This pterosaur Phoenix, however, was reborn out of ancient fossils unearthed in the Sahara.
“When this pterosaur was alive, the Sahara desert was a river bed basin lush with tropical plant and animal life,” explains project leader Nizar Ibrahim, a University College Dublin researcher. “This means there were lots of opportunities for different pterosaurs to co-exist, and perhaps feeding on quite different kinds of prey.”
Ibrahim and his team recovered the pterosaur's jaw bone that retains its original three dimensional shape, so the scientists can better reconstruct what Phoenix's head looked like.
“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,” said Ibrahim.
“During the excavation, we also discovered a partial neck vertebra that probably belonged to the same animal, inferring a wing span of about six meters (19.7 feet)," he added.
During the same expedition, Ibrahim and his colleagues also unearthed two other different types of pterosaurs, suggesting that several related species lived alongside each other in the same region and at the same time. Each probably specialized in a particular ecological niche, as many seabirds do today.
Until these discoveries, Africa had few pterosaurs. These giant flying reptiles had relatively lightweight bones optimized for flight. Conversely, the bones are terrible for preservation and often erode over the years. We'll likely hear about more such animals in future, however, thanks to better excavation and analysis techniques.
Tags: Extinct Animals, Paleontology, Prehistoric Animals, Prehistoric Era
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