Tucson, Arizona Friday, 19 July 2002
http://www.azstarnet.com/star/today/20719NFlyingReptile.html
By Paul Recer
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The fossilized skull of a flying reptile from the age of the dinosaurs shows it sported an impressive bony crest and may have lived on fish captured while skimming the surface of a steamy southern lagoon.
In a study appearing today in the journal Science, researchers Alexander W.A. Kellner and Diogenes de Almeida Campos say the fossil is from a previously unknown kind of pterosaur, a reptile that flew on large wings of furry skin, dipping and diving at speeds of up 25 mph to catch fish on the fly. Pterosaurs were the largest flying animals known.
The fossilized skull was dug up near the town of Santan do Cariri in northeastern Brazil. The scientists said the animal lived about 110 million years ago, spending its life soaring on 15-foot wings over a land dominated by lumbering dinosaurs.
They named the new pterosaur Thalassodromeus sethi. The first word is Greek for "sea runner" and the second honors the ancient Egyptian god Seth.
It is thought to have lived on the shore of an ancient lagoon not far from the ocean.
Kellner and de Almeida Campos said in Science that the pterosaur's four-foot-long skull was topped with a hollow, bony crest that rose 31 inches from the top of its head and may have acted like a rudder as the large animal flew.
The crest fossil is marked with grooves from blood vessels, suggesting that the top-knot also helped keep the animal cool, the researchers say. The blood vessels would have been near the skin's surface, allowing body heat to escape.
The jaw structure resembles that of a modern bird, called a skimmer, that captures its prey by gliding across the surface of a pool and dipping its beak.
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