Amelia Penny discovered the amazing fossil during a class trip in 2017. On a tidal platform, Penny noticed its mouth emerging from the limestone layer.
On the Isle of Skye in Scotland, a pterosaur fossil from the Jurassic era has been unearthed. According to the University of Edinburgh website, the huge winged monster with an estimated wingspan of more than 2.5 metres existed roughly 170 million years ago.
Scientists from the University of Edinburgh, National Museums Scotland, the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, the University of St Andrews, and the Staffin Museum on the Isle of Skye have published a study in Current Biology confirming the discovery.
The name Dearc sgiathanach, which means ‘winged reptile’ in Scottish Gaelic, has been given to the species.
Amelia Penny unearthed the remarkable fossil during a class trip in 2017. On a tidal platform, Penny noticed its mouth emerging from the limestone layer. After much work, it was finally retrieved and studied. Dearc had wide optic lobes on a CT scan of his head, indicating strong eyesight.
Even 50 million years before birds, pterosaurs were the first animals to have the capacity to fly. Dearc’s research has proved that pterosaurs evolved to be the size of fighter aircraft right before dinosaurs became extinct 66 million years ago. They were formerly thought to be smaller throughout the Jurassic period.
Penny’s Twitter account has been showered with praise for her Dearc discovery and doodles since then.
“Dearc is a fantastic example of why palaeontology will never cease to astound,” said Natalia Jagielska of the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences. Pterosaurs preserved in such excellent condition are extremely unusual, and they are normally found only in a few rock formations in Brazil and China. Despite this, a massive, well-preserved pterosaur was discovered on a tidal platform in Scotland.”
“To achieve flight, pterosaurs had hollow bones with thin bone walls,” Jagielska continued, “making their remains very fragile and unsuited to be preserved for millions of years.” Despite the fact that our skeleton has been dead for 160 million years, it is still in nearly perfect shape, articulated and nearly complete. Its razor-sharp fish-snatching teeth still have a gleaming enamel coating on them, as if he were alive only a few weeks ago.”
“This is a magnificent Scottish fossil.” The preservation is incredible, far surpassing any pterosaur ever discovered in Scotland and perhaps the greatest British skeleton discovered since Mary Anning’s time in the early 1800s. Dearc is the largest pterosaur known from the Jurassic period, which indicates that pterosaurs grew larger much earlier than previously thought, long before the Cretaceous period, when they were competing with birds, and this is hugely significant,” University of Edinburgh website quoted Professor Steve Brusatte from the School of GeoSciences as saying.
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