A newly discovered species of pterosaur, a flying reptile that lived over 200 million years ago, has been identified from a fossil unearthed in Arizona, BBC reports. Named Eotephradactylus mcintireae, it is now considered the oldest known pterosaur in North America, researchers from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History announced. The jawbone of the ancient reptile was unearthed in Arizona back in 2011, but modern scanning techniques have now revealed details showing that it belongs to a species new to science. The research team, led by scientists at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, has named the creature Eotephradactylus mcintireae, meaning ash-winged dawn goddess. It is a reference to the volcanic ash that helped preserve its bones in an ancient riverbed. Details of the discovery are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. At about 209 million years old, this is now believed to be the earliest pterosaur to be found in North America. The bones of Triassic pterosaurs are small, thin, and often hollow, so they get destroyed before they get fossilised, explained Dr Kligman. The site of this discovery is a fossil bed in a desert landscape of ancient rock in the Petrified Forest National Park. Read the full report here.
