Dinosaur: It has now been confirmed that the fossils are from a rhamfororcan pterosaur.
Santiago:
Chilean scientists have announced the discovery of the first remains of the southern hemisphere of a type of “winged lizard” of the Jurassic era known as pterosaur.
The dinosaur fossils that lived about 160 million years ago in what is now the Atacama Desert were unearthed in 2009.
They have now been confirmed to be of a rhamphorhynchine pterosaur: the first creature of this nature to be found in Gondwana, the prehistoric supercontinent that later formed the land masses of the southern hemisphere.
Researcher Jhonatan Alarcon of the University of Chile said the creatures had a wingspan of up to two meters, a long tail and a pointed snout.
“We show that the distribution of animals in this group was wider than was known until now,” he added.
The discovery was also “the oldest known pterosaur found in Chile,” scientists told the scientific journal Acta Paleontologica Polonic.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)