A new species of flying reptiles reshuffles the timeline of pterosaur evolution

About 230 million years ago, almost 80 million years before the first bird appeared, their distantly related cousins, the pterosaurs took to the sky, as the first group of active fliers among the vertebrates. Pterosaurs developed active, flapping flight with the help of a wing membrane, which was mainly spanned by the strongly elongated fourth finger of the hand.

In the course of their evolution, the flight capabilities of pterosaurs were improved. Whereas most early forms had still rather short wings and a long tail, the derived subgroup of pterodactyloids had slender, elongate wings and a shortened tail. These animals included basically all Cretaceous pterosaurs and the largest flying animals ever, such as Quetzalcoatlus, which reached wingspans of 12 m or more.The transition from the basal forms to the pterodactyloids happened during the Jurassic, and the first representatives of this group appear in the fossil record in the Late Jurassic, some 160 million years ago. However, our knowledge of pterosaur evolution in the Jurassic is based almost exclusively on the fossil record of the Northern Hemisphere, as very few fossils are known from the southern continents.

Alexandra Fernandes and Prof. Oliver Rauhut of the Bavarian State Collection for Paleontology and Geology (SNSB - Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie and Geologie) have now introduced a new species of pterosaur from the late Early Jurassic (some 178 million years ago) of Chubut province, Argentina. The new species, named Melkamter pateko, shows several characters of the advanced pterodactyloids – but is around 15 million years older than its next-oldest known relative. Apparently, the origin of this group of pterosaurs reaches much further back in time than currently recognized.

The location of Melkamter's find is also remarkable. The new species comes from an inland setting - apparently this pterosaur lived far from the nearest seacoast. Most known Jurassic pterosaurs come from marine environments and obviously lived close to the sea and probably mainly fed on fish and other marine organisms. In contrast, Melkamter probably mainly fed on insects. This occurrence in inland environments and preference for non-aquatic prey supports recent suggestions that pterodactyloids might have originated in such environments.

„It is possible that an early specialization in highly mobile prey such as flying insects contributed to the evolutionary success of the pterodactyloids. This find highlights not only how little we still know about the pterosaurs of the Southern Hemisphere, but also the potential that the southern continents have to improve our understanding of pterosaur evolution”, explains Alexandra Fernandes reseacher at the Bavarian State Collection for Paleontology and Geology and first author of the study. The study was recently published in the scientific journal Royal Society Open Science.