170 MILLION-YEAR-OLD FOSSIL OF FLYING REPTILE DISCOVERED IN SCOTLAND

Tue 01 March 2022:

Palaeontologist Amelia Penny discovered a fossilized jaw in the landscape during a field research five years ago on the Isle of Skye in rural northwestern Scotland.

The nearly-complete fossil now portrays a 170 million-year-old ancient flying reptile that is regarded to be “the largest” of its type ever unearthed from the “Jurassic” era, according to the National Museum of Scotland. According to CBS News, the fossil will be added to the museum’s collection.

‘Pterosaurs’ preserved in such excellent condition, according to Natalia Jagielska, a Ph.D. student at the University of Edinburgh who is also the author of a recent scientific study documenting the discovery, are extremely rare, and they are normally found only in a few rock formations in Brazil and China.

“And yet, an enormous superbly preserved pterosaur emerged from a tidal platform in Scotland,” CBS News reported citing Jagielska. Further, the discovery has been released in a recent paper published in ‘Current Biology’.

According to Steve Brusatte, a palaeontology professor at Edinburgh University, the fossil discovery was the finest in the UK since the early 1800s, when famed fossil hunter Mary Anning uncovered numerous important Jurassic fossils on the southern English coast.

He claimed that the specimen possessed “feather light” bones that were “as thin as sheets of paper”, and that cutting it out from the rock with diamond-tipped saws took several days. Further, the professor went on to say, “It was nearly midnight when we finished removing it, and we were heaving around 400 pounds off the beach with our torches and headlamps,” as per NBC News.