'Stunning' pterosaurus skelleton may reveal new info about the species

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Hidden in barrels and loaded on trucks, thousands of limestone slabs were set to be smuggled out of Brazl. Taken from a quarry in the country’s renowned Araripe Basin, these were no ordinary rocks. They contained preserved remains and impeccable imprints of creatures that lived millions of years ago.

Among the relics was a bizarre winged reptile, nearly four feet tall with a jaw similar to a bird’s beak and larger-than-life headgear. Now scientists report it to be the first nearly complete skeleton of the pterosaur species Tupandactylus navigans, which lived during the early Cretaceous period, roughly 110 million years ago.

“I’ve seen many exceptional, beautifully preserved pterosaurs in Brazil and abroad, but specimens like this one, which is nearly complete and articulated, with soft tissue preservation, are scarce,” says Fabiana Rodrigues Costa, a palaeontologist at the Federal University of ABC in São Paulo, Brazil, and co-author of the study published today in the journal PLOS ONE. “It’s like winning a lottery.”

The findings could one day help resolve an ongoing debate about how the gargantuan crests on these reptiles’ heads may have affected their flying abilities.

“It’s a one-of-a-kind fossil,” Costa says.

Source - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/stunning-fossil-seized-in-police-raid-reveals-prehistoric-flying-reptiles-secrets

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That video showing them in place was really cool, exciting to see. Interesting how much information is stored in the Earth, and we learn more with each excavation. 

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This Twitter thread has lots of information about it!