law in Brazil seize a fossil from smugglers that has wrick out to be one of the easily - ever preservation of a flying reptile , a flying reptile that lived over 100 million years ago . They caught it just in time , as the fossil had been thin apart and was about to be shipped out of the nation . Now , eight years later , paleontologists have finally been able to give it a good look — and they were thrilled .
The fogy belongs to a Tupandactylus navigans , a type of pterosaur from the early Cretaceous , the start of the end of the dinosaur age . First identified in 2003 , T. navigans is a tapejarid , a intermediate - sized pterosaur in particular recognizable for the large soft tissue paper crest . ( Another example is the larger animal Tupandactylus imperator , whose sail dwarf that of T. navigans . ) The rescued T. navigans features a adorable sail - work crest sprouting from its read/write head and even a smaller crown descending from the tip of its jaw , like the pointiest chin you ’ve ever take care . Tapejarids have been fragmentary in the fossil track record , so the recently discover fossil overhaul paleontologists ’ reason of what a full creature would front like .
The specimen was launch in a law raid at São Paulo ’s Santos Harbor , one of three raids in 2013 that turned up 3,000 fossil specimens , place to be smuggled out of the country . Unfortunately , illegal trafficking of fossils out of Brazil is anall – too – commonproblem in the country ; the thousands of fossils the law recuperate in 2013 mean a longstanding trouble that ’s yet to have any clear - gash resolution .
An artist’s rendering of the early Cretaceous pterosaur Tupandactylus navigans.Illustration:Victor Beccari
The 3,000 dodo were confiscated by Brazilian police and finally distributed to two Brazilian museum . Today , a team of Brazilian researchers published their analysis of the remarkably well - preserved T. navigans fossil found in the foray . The fogy had been sawed into six pieces but all the same offered a unique look into the word structure of the early Cretaceous pterosaur . Their results werepublishedin the journal PLOS One .
“ Now we have this specimen that has not only the complete skull , so the best - preserved skull of all the Tupandactylus that we have , but also the post - cranial almost fully articulated , ” said Victor Beccari , a paleontologist at the University of São Paulo and lead author of the paper , in a video call .
“ We think this fossil is at least 95 % complete , which for paleontologist is already a band , but for a pterosaur is even disturbed , ” Beccari added . “ Not only the osseous tissue but the soft tissue — the crest and the beak . ”
A photo of the cut specimen and the 3D model and diagram the team could extract from it.Graphic:Victor Beccari
The fogey was irreparably damaged when it was slew , which was in all likelihood to make it easier to transmit . ( “ If we receive a fossil with this specimen intact , there ’s no way in heaven or hell you ’d cut the specimen the way they did , ” Beccari said . ) But the small tranches of the T. navigans specimen made it potential for the inquiry team to crop up the dodo into a aesculapian - ground level CT scanner , imaging every layer of the dodo through the rock . They then were capable to create a 3D working model of the flying reptile ’s integral body shape and sizing .
“ The author did excellent work of distinguish in item all the bony elements , including CT scanning , which land a new look at word structure … Although it belongs to a known taxon , this specimen brings new entropy about the tapejarid pterosaur as well as an excellent voiced tissue saving , which can show us more about the paleobiology of the group , ” Alex Aires , a fossilist at the Federal University of Santa Maria in Brazil who was unaffiliated with the research , say in an electronic mail .
base on its sound structure — its head crown seemed too big to allow the pterosaur to aviate long distances , though it was capable of powered flight of steps — the researchers believe it had a terrene forage lifestyle . This pterosaur fossilized in the limestone beds of what is now northeastern Brazil . That stretch of stone is called Crato Formation and is renowned for its conservation conditions . base on other fossil discover in that surface area , the flying reptile ’s environment may have been a saline lake .
Not everything about the flying reptile is place in Harlan Fisk Stone , though . Beccari ’s team still needs to examine the 3D models they built to well see how T. navigans may have moved around its environment . They also need to understand more about its ecological corner . What is for sure is that none of this would be potential if the dodo had been smuggle out of Brazil as planned .
More : Fossil Poaching and the Black Market in Dinosaur Bones
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