Credit: Mark Witton

The discovery of a surprisingly small fossilized pterosaur (pictured with domestic cat for scale) in rock some 77 million years old challenges the accepted history of the winged reptiles. Scientists had thought that, by around 100 million years ago, small pterosaurs had been replaced by larger species.

Elizabeth Martin-Silverstone at the University of Southampton, UK, and her colleagues uncovered a wing bone and vertebrae from a pterosaur in 80-million- to 72-million-year-old rock formations in British Columbia, Canada. Although the creature's 1.5-metre wingspan was tiny compared with that of the 10-metre giants known from this period, bone analysis revealed that it was almost fully grown.

Fossilized juveniles of larger pterosaur species from this period are also rare, suggesting that the record may be biased against small pterosaurs.

R. Soc. Open Sci. 3, 160333 (2016)