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takyon writes:

Winged reptiles thrived before dinosaurs

Palaeontologists have found a new species of pterosaur - the family of prehistoric flying reptiles that includes pterodactyl. It is about 210 millions years old, pre-dating its known relatives by 65 million years.

Named Caelestiventus hanseni, the species' delicate bones were preserved in the remains of a desert oasis. The discovery suggests that these animals thrived around the world before the dinosaurs evolved.

[...] Finding a pterosaur in an ancient Triassic-aged sand dune is a hugely pleasant surprise. What makes this discovery so remarkable is that very few pterosaurs are known from the entire Triassic Period, which means that we have few fossils that tell the story of how these strange winged reptiles evolved during the first 30 million years of their history.

It's a trifecta: a Triassic pterosaur from a new place, preserved in an immaculate way, and found in rocks from an environment that we didn't think they lived in so early during their evolution. What this means is that pterosaurs were already geographically widespread and thriving in a variety of environments very early in their evolution.

Dinosaurs first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago.

Caelestiventus hanseni gen. et sp. nov. extends the desert-dwelling pterosaur record back 65 million years (DOI: 10.1038/s41559-018-0627-y) (DX)

Original Submission

Pterosaurs are the oldest known powered flying vertebrates. Originating in the Late Triassic, they thrived to the end of the Cretaceous. Triassic pterosaurs are extraordinarily rare and all but one specimen come from marine deposits in the Alps. A new comparatively large (wing span >150 cm) pterosaur, Caelestiventus hanseni gen. et sp. nov., from Upper Triassic desert deposits of western North America preserves delicate structural and pneumatic details not previously known in early pterosaurs, and allows a reinterpretation of crushed Triassic specimens. It shows that the earliest pterosaurs were geographically widely distributed and ecologically diverse, even living in harsh desert environments. It is the only record of desert-dwelling non-pterodactyloid pterosaurs and predates all known desert pterosaurs by more than 65 Myr. A phylogenetic analysis shows it is closely allied with Dimorphodon macronyx from the Early Jurassic of Britain.