The specimen was unearthed in 2014 throughout excavations in an active limestone quarry. The research team behind the discovery are Felix Augustin, Andreas Matzke, Panagiotis Kampouridis, and Josephina Hartung from the University of Tübingen (Germany) and Raimund Albersdörfer from the Dinosaurier Museum Altmühltal (Germany).
” The rocks of the quarry, which yielded the new Pterodactylus specimen, include silicified limestone that has actually been dated to the upper Kimmeridgian stage (around 152 million years ago),” explains Felix Augustin of the University of Tübingen, who is the lead author of the research study. “Previously, Pterodactylus had just been found in younger rocks of southern Germany belonging to the Tithonian phase that follows after the Kimmeridgian”.
The specimen is a complete, well-preserved skeleton of a small-sized individual. “Only a really little portion of the left mandible as well as of the best and left tibia is missing. Otherwise, the skeleton is nearly perfectly protected with every bone present and in its roughly appropriate anatomical position,” the scientists compose in their research study.
With a 5 cm-long skull, the Painten Pterodactylus represents an uncommon “sub-adult” individual. “The Painten Pterodactylus was of an intermediate, and seldom found, ontogenetic age at the time of its death, between two successive year classes.”
The Painten quarry has actually yielded lots of other “exceptionally maintained fossils”, consisting of ichthyosaurs, turtles, terrestrial and marine crocodile loved ones, and dinosaurs. Many of them, like this brand-new pterosaur specimen, are on display screen in the new Dinosaurier Museum Altmühltal in Denkendorf (Bavaria, Germany).
Referral: “The geologically earliest specimen of Pterodactylus: a brand-new remarkably preserved skeleton from the Upper Jurassic (Kimmeridgian) Plattenkalk deposits of Painten (Bavaria, Germany)” by Felix J. Augustin, Panagiotis Kampouridis, Josephina Hartung, Raimund Albersdörfer and Andreas T. Matzke, 28 November 2022, Fossil Record.DOI: 10.3897/ fr.25.90692.
Pterodactylus antiquus, DMA-JP-2014/ 004, from the Upper Jurassic (Kimmeridgian) Torleite Formation of Painten; overview photo. Credit: Augustin et al
. Pterosaurs were a group of flying reptiles that lived throughout the dinosaur era, from the Late Triassic period (227 million years ago) till the end-Cretaceous termination event (66 million years ago). These reptiles had wingspans that varied from 1 to 12 meters and were the dominant species in the skies for over 160 million years.
The first recognized and named pterosaur was Pterodactylus, which was found in the Solnhofen Limestone of Bavaria, Germany. Pterodactylus was called and very first described by the Italian biologist Cosimo Alessandro Collini in 1784. Originally, this fossil was believed to be an aquatic animal, however it was later determined to be a flying reptile belonging to a new and formerly unidentified group by the French biologist Georges Cuvier.
The earliest specimen of this iconic pterosaur was recently discovered near Painten, a village in the southern part of the Franconian Alb in central Bavaria. The fossil, explained in a research study in the journal Fossil Record, has to do with one million years older than other Pterodactylus specimens.
Pterodactylus antiquus, DMA-JP-2014/ 004, from the Upper Jurassic (Kimmeridgian) Torleite Formation of Painten; summary photograph. With a 5 cm-long skull, the Painten Pterodactylus represents an unusual “sub-adult” person. “Generally, the Pterodactylus specimens are not uniformly dispersed across the full-size range however primarily fall into distinct size classes that are separated by significant gaps. “The Painten Pterodactylus was of an intermediate, and rarely found, ontogenetic age at the time of its death, in between 2 successive year classes.”