Among the discoveries in what used to be a lake shoreline between giant sand dunes is a new pterosaur (TEH\u2019-ruh-sawr) that would have been the largest flying reptile of the time. It wielded its ferocious teeth and powerful skull to gobble up small crocodile type creatures as it soared over a desert some 210 million years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you saw one of these things coming at you with its jaws open, it would freak you out of your mind,\u201d said Brooks Britt, a Brigham Young University paleontologist who presented preliminary findings this week at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference in Dallas.<\/p>\n
He and fellow paleontologists plan to publish the findings in scientific journal next year. Eight different animals, most likely new, have been identified at a site discovered in 2009 near Dinosaur National Monument on the Utah-Colorado border. The discoveries include:<\/p>\n
\u2013 A type of a strange-looking reptile with a head like a bird, arms like a mole and a claw on the tip of the tail called a drepanosaur.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Several small crocodile-like creatures with armor on their backs called sphenosuchians.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Two different types of meat-eating dinosaurs, one related to the coelophysis, a scrawny dinosaur featured in the recent movie, \u201cWalking with Dinosaurs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a fantastic site,\u201d said Brian Andres, a University of South Florida paleontologist who heard the presentation this week. \u201cIt\u2019s in a time and a place that we really do not have a good record of.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pterosaur discovery is significant because it fills a gap in the fossil record between earlier, smaller pterosaurs and the giant ones that came later, Andres said.<\/p>\n
It is related to another wicked-jawed pterosaur discovered in England: the Dimorphodon.<\/p>\n
Each side of its lower jaw had two fangs and 28 teeth. \u201cThis thing is built like an aerial predator,\u201d Andres said.<\/p>\n
The skull and wing bone found are also noteworthy because they are intact, and not crushed, a rarity for pterosaurs. It is the first known Triassic pterosaur found in North America, other than one unearthed in Greenland, Britt said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is absurdly rare to find delicate, small skeletons from anywhere in time, anywhere in the world,\u201d said Adam Pritchard, a Yale paleontologist not part of the discovery team. \u201cTo have them from the Triassic period, which is the very beginning of the age of reptiles, is really unprecedented, especially in western north America.\u201d<\/p>\n
The site was discovered by paleontologists Dan Chure of Dinosaur National Monument and George Englemann of the University of Nebraska. Chure said the duo realized right away they had stumbled upon the discovery of their lives.<\/p>\n
So far, they\u2019ve found 11,500 bones \u2013 and they may be only halfway through getting them all out, he said. The new pterosaur, yet to be named, was found last year by a college student carefully extracting fossils from a 300-pound block of sandstone from the site.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the best stuff I\u2019ll ever see in my life,\u201d said Britts, 60, who has been collecting dinosaur fossils for five decades. \u201cIt\u2019s like Christmas every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
The site has been named \u201cSaints and Sinners,\u201d a playful nod to the collaboration between Britt, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and non-Mormons Chure and Englemann.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sure we would exactly consider ourselves sinners, but it had a nice ring to it,\u201d Chure said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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