Secrets of ancient flying reptiles egg fossils crack open
A dazzling discovery in northwestern China of hundreds of fossilized pterosaur eggs is providing fresh understanding of these flying reptiles that lived alongside the dinosaurs including evidence that their babies were born flightless and needed parental care.
Scientists said on Thursday they unearthed 215 eggs
of the fish-eating Hamipterus tianshanensis -- a species whose adults
had a crest atop an elongated skull, pointy teeth and a wingspan of more
than 11 feet (3.5 meters) -- including 16 eggs containing partial
embryonic remains.
Fossils
of hundreds of male and female adult Hamipterus individuals were found
alongside juveniles and eggs at the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region
site, making this Cretaceous Period species that lived 120 million years
ago perhaps the best understood of all pterosaurs.
“We want to
call this region ‘Pterosaur Eden,'” said paleontologist Shunxing
Jiang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Vertebrate
Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.
Pterosaurs were Earth’s first flying vertebrates. Birds and bats appeared later.
Until
now, no pterosaur eggs had been found with embryos preserved in three
dimensions. Researchers think up to 300 eggs may be present, some buried
under the exposed fossils.
The embryonic bones indicated the hind legs of a
baby Hamipterus developed more rapidly than crucial wing elements like
the humerus bone, said paleontologist Alexander Kellner of Museu
Nacional in Rio de Janeiro.
“Some birds can fly on the same day
they break out from the egg, while some others will need a long period
of parental care. Our conclusion is that a baby Hamipterus can walk but
can’t fly,” Jiang said, an unexpected finding.
The
researchers believe these pterosaurs lived in a bustling colony near a
large freshwater lake. Kellner cited evidence that females gathered
together to lay eggs in nesting colonies and returned over the years to
the same nesting site.
They suspect the eggs
and some juvenile and adult individuals were washed away from a nesting
site in a storm and into the lake, where they were preserved and later
fossilized.
There
had been a paucity of pterosaur eggs and embryos in the paleontological
record because it is difficult for soft-shelled eggs to fossilize.
The research was published in the journal Science.
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