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The first known pterosaur eggs were found in the quarries of Liaoning, the same place that yielded feathered dinosaurs, and in Loma del Pterodaustro (Lagarcito Formation, Argentina). The eggs from Liaoning were squashed flat with no signs of cracking, so evidently the eggs had leathery shells, as in modern lizards. [ 195 ]
A = Anapsid, B = Synapsid, C = Diapsid. It was traditionally assumed that first reptiles were anapsids, having a solid skull with holes only for the nose, eyes, spinal cord, etc.; [10] the discoveries of synapsid-like openings in the skull roof of the skulls of several members of Parareptilia, including lanthanosuchoids, millerettids, bolosaurids, some nycteroleterids, some procolophonoids and ...
Gideon Mantell discovered some fossil bones in the Wealden beds (Wessex Formation) of Sussex, England that he believed were the remains of ancient birds. [24] Mantell recognized that his "bird" bones were actually pterosaur fossils and reported his findings to the scientific literature. These were the first Cretaceous pterosaur fossils ever ...
Quetzalcoatlus. Quetzalcoatlus (/ kɛtsəlkoʊˈætləs /) is a genus of azhdarchid pterosaur known from the Late Cretaceous Maastrichtian age of North America. The first specimen, recovered in 1971 from the Javelina Formation, consists of several wing fragments. It was made the holotype of Quetzalcoatlus northropi in 1975 by Douglas Lawson and ...
There were two areas where early success attracted considerable public attention, the transition between reptiles and birds, and the evolution of the modern single-toed horse. [77] In 1861 the first specimen of Archaeopteryx , an animal with both teeth and feathers and a mix of other reptilian and avian features, was discovered in a limestone ...
Pterodactylus (from Ancient Greek: πτεροδάκτυλος, romanized: pterodáktylos ' winged finger ' [2]) is a genus of extinct pterosaurs.It is thought to contain only a single species, Pterodactylus antiquus, which was the first pterosaur to be named and identified as a flying reptile and one of the first prehistoric reptiles to ever be discovered.
Plesiosaurs were among the first fossil reptiles discovered. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, scientists realised how distinctive their build was and they were named as a separate order in 1835. The first plesiosaurian genus, the eponymous Plesiosaurus, was named in 1821. Since then, more than a hundred valid species have been described.
Before this discovery, few fossils of Paleocene-epoch vertebrates had been found in ancient tropical environments of South America. [6] The fossils were then transported to the Florida Museum of Natural History, where they were studied and described by an international team of Canadian, American, and Panamanian scientists in 2009 led by Jason J ...