A new genus and species of pterosaur precursor has been described from a 230-million-year-old partial skeleton found in southern Brazil.
The newly-discovered species lived in what is now Brazil during the Late Triassic epoch, around 230 million years ago.
Named Venetoraptor gassenae, the reptile was approximately 1 m (3.3 feet) in length and weighed between 4 and 8 kg.
The ancient creature belonged to Lagerpetidae, a family of earliest-diverging pterosaur precursors.
“Dinosaurs and pterosaurs originated in the Middle or early Late Triassic epoch, and both groups survived the end-Triassic extinction and became the numerically dominant tetrapods in land and sky, respectively, during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods,” said Federal University of Santa Maria paleontologist Rodrigo Temp Müller and his colleagues.
“As a result of a very scarce fossil record, the origins of these groups have been an obscure but strongly debated topic for decades.”
“However, a wave of recent discoveries dramatically increased our knowledge of both dinosaur and pterosaur precursors,” they said.
“It is now clear that their taxonomic diversity was considerably broader than previously thought, with several sub-clades (that is, aphanosaurs, lagerpetids and silesaurids) distributed throughout the ancient supercontinent Pangaea.”
“In spite of improvement in the fossil record of dinosaur and pterosaur precursors, their skulls and other regions of the skeleton (for example, hands) are still represented solely by fragmentary or poorly preserved specimens.”
“These knowledge gaps preclude more comprehensive ecomorphological and macro-evolutionary studies of these forerunners.”
Venetoraptor gassenae possessed a combination of unexpected features, including a sharp, raptorial-like beak and enlarged hands with scimitar-like claws.
“The unusual raptorial-like beak of Venetoraptor gassenae predates that of dinosaurs by around 80 million years,” the paleontologists…
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