Rare Smaller Pterosaur Discovered, No Larger Than A Typical Domestic Cat

The fossils of a rare small-bodied pterosaur were discovered on Hornby Island in British Columbia. The extinct creature was a flying reptile or also referred to as a "flying dinosaur" from the Late Cretaceous period approximately 77 million years ago.

The fossils comprise of a humerus, dorsal vertebrae (including three fused vertebrae) and other fragments. The new specimen had a wingspan of only I.5 meters. This is unusual as most pterosaurs were much larger with wingspans of between four and eleven meters. The biggest is large as a giraffe, with a wingspan of a small plane, according to Phys.Org.

This cat-sized pterosaur looks like adorable origami https://t.co/lTD6L6RErE pic.twitter.com/IsLzvO6vFZ

— The Verge (@verge) August 30, 2016

The findings were described in the Royal Society Open Science journal. It was led by Elizabeth Martin-Silverstone, a Palaeobiology Ph.D. student at the University of Southampton and other colleagues.

Martin-Silverstone explained that this new pterosaur is exciting because it suggests that small pterosaurs were present all the way until the end of the Cretaceous, and weren't outcompeted by birds. She further explained that the hollow bones of pterosaurs are notoriously poorly preserved, and larger animals seem to be preferentially preserved in similarly aged Late Cretaceous ecosystems of North America. She added that this indicates that a small pterosaur would very rarely be preserved, but not necessarily that they didn't exist.

The toothless flying reptile would have been no larger than a typical domestic cat. The researchers described it as "atypically diminutive." It is technically known as azhdarchoid pterosaur. The typical members of the Azhdarchidae family have long legs, extremely long necks and spear-like jaws. This indicates the newly discovered dwarf pterosaur is particularly unusual. It's an adult too as the bone fragments suggest extensive maturity at the time of death, according to IFL Science. Martin-Silverstone stated that this adds to a growing set of evidence that the Late Cretaceous period was not dominated by large or giant species, and that smaller pterosaurs may have been well represented at this time.