The unexpected appearance of a live snake on a plane caused some turbulence among business-class passengers aboard a United Airlines jet at the end of a flight from Florida to New Jersey.
The reptile stowaway, identified as a harmless garter snake, turned up on United Airlines Flight 2038 from Tampa shortly after landing Monday afternoon at Newark Liberty international airport, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
As the plane taxied from the runway to the gate, passengers in the business-class cabin began shrieking and pulling their feet up off the floor, one passenger told regional cable outlet News 12 New Jersey.
Airport animal-control officers and Port Authority police officers were at the gate when the plane arrived, and removed the snake, which was later released into the wild, Port Authority spokesperson Cheryl Ann Albiez said by email on Tuesday.
There were no injuries, no impact to airport operations, and the plane later departed Newark, she said.
A spokesperson for United, when asked about the incident, said only that crew members who were alerted by passengers “called the appropriate authorities to take care of the situation”.
No mention was made by any of the parties involved as to how the snake might have gotten aboard a commercial airline flight.
But the situation no doubt reminded some passengers of the 2006 movie thriller Snakes on a Plane, a fictional story about dozens of venomous snakes being released by criminals on a passenger plane in an attempt to kill a murder trial witness.
Monday’s incident was not the first real-life instance of a serpentine creature hitching a ride aboard a commercial jet. A large snake was found slithering through the passenger cabin of an Aeromexico flight to Mexico City in 2016, and a python was spotted by passengers clinging to the airplane wing – on the outside – of a flight from Australia to Papua New Guinea in 2013.
150 million years ago, a prehistoric reptile unlike modern lizards slinked around what is now Wyoming. An ancient rhynchocephalian, the insect-eating animal’s discovery could shed light on the persistence of its living relative, the tuatara.
The reptile is named Opisthiamimus gregori. It looks like a lizard, but like New Zealand’s tuatara, it is not one. Lizards are squamates, an order of reptiles that includes snakes and worm lizards. Rhynchocephalians are a distinct group that diverged from lizards in the Triassic Period.
The fossils of Opisthiamimus come from Wyoming, where they sat above what was once an allosaurus nest. Paleontologists found four specimens at the site, including a nearly complete articulated skeleton of the reptile. The newly discovered species is described in a study published today in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology.
“What [the fossil] does is hammer home the fact that rhynchocephalians were a very diverse group for a lot of their evolutionary history,” said study co-author Matthew Carrano, the curator of Dinosauria at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, in an email to Gizmodo. “There’s likely more ‘hidden diversity’ out there, because so many of the fossils are small and fragmentary, and hard to identify.”
Last year, scientists described a rhynchocephalian called Taytalura alcoberi, helping to clarify the evolutionary divergence between their reptilian order and squamates. Taytalura is only known from a well-preserved skull, but the younger Opisthiamimus has a nearly complete skeleton. Its discovery builds on that of Taytalura by showing that their reptilian order was diverse relatively early in deep time.
“I agree with the authors that this is an important finding from the Morrison Formation,” said Tiago Simões, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University who was not affiliated with the recent paper, in an email to Gizmodo. Simões was one of the researchers who worked on Taytalura.
Opisthiamimus is very ancient; its existence precedes Tyrannosaurus rex by 60 million years. It lived in the late Jurassic, alongside Archaeopteryx and Stegosaurus (though much closer to the ground than the former two, and much smaller, measuring just 6 inches from nose to tail.)
The only extant rhynchocephalian is the tuatara, part of the subgroup called the sphenodonts, of which there are two species. The tuatara can live over 100 years and has the fastest-moving sperm of any reptile. It notably has a parietal eye in the center of its forehead and three rows of teeth: two in its upper jaw and one in the lower. Unlike other reptiles, rhynchocephalian teeth are part of their jaws, rather than separate, replaceable elements.
Because of its unique anatomy, the tuatara is often referred to as a ‘living fossil.’ It has persisted when all other members of its order could not. But don’t call it primitive: It simply found a winning formula for survival and stuck with it.
“I would be cautious with the phylogenetic interpretation the authors provided for this species,” Simões added, noting that features of Opisthiamimus are more typical of sphenodontians that appear later in the fossil record.
Finding more fossils of the ancient reptiles could help explain why squamates persist on Earth in abundance while rhynchocephalians do not.
“One theory is that one or more of the unique features of squamates allowed them to outcompete rhynchocephalians,” Carrano said. “There’s a broad pattern of gradual decline in rhynchocephalians alongside a gradual increase in squamate diversity. But competition happens within environments, and right now we don’t have enough fossils to really investigate that idea, though in a place like the Morrison Formation we are getting close.”
Now, the team is sifting through the remains of the Allosaurus nest found just below Opisthiamimus. More rhynchocephalian fossils await discovery, in the Morrison Formation and beyond. When they come to light, they could help us unpack they reptilian family tree.
More: Rare Fossil of Triassic Reptile Discovered in Antarctica
The discovery of new fossils suggest gigantic dragons were flying around Earth alongside dinosaurs 86 million years ago.
Scientists in Argentina discovered a new species of flying reptiles as long as a school bus known as “The Dragon of Death.”
A study published online in April detailed the findings in the scientific journal Cretaceous Research.
A reconstruction of the pterosaur – and accompanying images on social media – displayed in Mendoza, Argentina, recently drew attention to the study. The pterosaur, also known as Thanatosdrakon amaru, is believed to have predated birds as the first creatures with wings to hunt their prey. “The Dragon of Death” is a combination of Greek words for death (Thanatos) and dragon (drakon).
Paleontologists in Argentina have unearthed fossils of a new species of pterosaur called “The Dragon of Death.”
“The remains of Thanatosdrakon present different particularities that allow us to differentiate them from other known pterosaurs,” project leader Leonardo Ortiz told USA TODAY. “Fundamentally, these characteristics are found in the vertebrae and limbs. This allowed us to establish a new species of pterosaur.”
Largest raptor ever? ‘Shadow of death’ dinosaur fossils discovered in Argentina
A team of paleontologists found the fossils in the Andes mountains of Argentina’s western Mendoza province, noting that the rocks preserved the reptile’s remains dating back 86 million years to the Cretaceous period, according to the study. That’s 20 million years before an asteroid impact wiped out three quarters of life on Earth.
The team also classified the pterosaur fossil as the biggest discovered in South America and one of the largest in the world.
Though scientists have put pterosaurs in the same category as birds because of their ability to fly, they’re difficult to classify because they were cold-blooded predators. They had no rivals in the sky, so pterosaurs are believed to have ruled over all of the continents and evolved into various shapes and sizes.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ‘Dragon of Death’ flying reptile fossils discovered in Argentina
BUENOS AIRES, May 23 (Reuters) – Argentine scientists discovered a new species of a huge flying reptile dubbed “The Dragon of Death” that lived 86 millions of years ago alongside dinosaurs, in a find shedding fresh insight on a predator whose body was as long as a yellow school bus.
The new specimen of ancient flying reptile, or pterosaur, measured around 30 feet (9 meters) long and researchers say it predated birds as among the first creatures on Earth to use wings to hunt its prey from prehistoric skies.
The team of paleontologists discovered the fossils of the newly coined Thanatosdrakon amaru in the Andes mountains in Argentina’s western Mendoza province. They found that the rocks preserving the reptile’s remains dated back 86 million years to the Cretaceous period.
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The estimated date means these fearsome flying reptiles lived at least some 20 million years before an asteroid impact on what is now Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula wiped out about three-quarters of life on the planet about 66 millions years ago.
Project leader Leonardo Ortiz said in an interview over the weekend that the fossil’s never-before-seen characteristics required a new genus and species name, with the latter combining ancient Greek words for death (thanatos) and dragon (drakon).
“It seemed appropriate to name it that way,” said Ortiz. “It’s the dragon of death.”
The reptile would likely have been a frightening sight. Researchers, who published their study last April in the scientific journal Cretaceous Research, said the fossil’s huge bones classify the new species as the largest pterosaur yet discovered in South America and one of the largest found anywhere.
“We don’t have a current record of any close relative that even has a body modification similar to these beasts,” said Ortiz.
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Reporting by Horacio Soria and Miguel Lo Bianco; Writing by Brendan O’Boyle; Editing by David Alire Garcia and Sandra Maler
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Argentine scientists discovered a new species of a huge flying reptile dubbed “The Dragon of Death” that lived 86 millions of years ago alongside dinosaurs, in a find shedding fresh insight on a predator whose body was as long as a yellow school bus.
The new specimen of ancient flying reptile, or pterosaur, measured around 30 feet (9 meters) long and researchers say it predated birds as among the first creatures on Earth to use wings to hunt its prey from prehistoric skies.
The team of paleontologists discovered the fossils of the newly coined Thanatosdrakon amaru in the Andes mountains in Argentina’s western Mendoza province. They found that the rocks preserving the reptile’s remains dated back 86 million years to the Cretaceous period.
The estimated date means these fearsome flying reptiles lived at least some 20 million years before an asteroid impact on what is now Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula wiped out about three-quarters of life on the planet about 66 millions years ago.
‘Dragon of Death’
Project leader Leonardo Ortiz said in an interview over the weekend that the fossil’s never-before-seen characteristics required a new genus and species name, with the latter combining ancient Greek words for death (thanatos) and dragon (drakon).
Scottish fossil of flying reptile leaves scientists ‘gobsmacked’ (credit: REUTERS)
“It seemed appropriate to name it that way,” said Ortiz. “It’s the dragon of death.”
The reptile would likely have been a frightening sight. Researchers, who published their study last April in the scientific journal Cretaceous Research, said the fossil’s huge bones classify the new species as the largest pterosaur yet discovered in South America and one of the largest found anywhere.
“We don’t have a current record of any close relative that even has a body modification similar to these beasts,” said Ortiz.
In the shadow of a massive Patagonian glacier, paleontologists have unearthed a rare fossil find: an ancient marine reptile that died while pregnant. This dolphin-like creature, called an ichthyosaur, is the first of its kind to be discovered in Chile, where it was retrieved from a dig site near the Tyndall Glacier in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field.
“This site is really unique, because it’s capturing a time period in Earth’s history where we don’t have a very good fossil record for marine reptiles,” Erin Maxwell, an ichthyosaur specialist and curator of marine reptiles at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany who helped excavate the fossil, told Live Science.
Ichthyosaurs (which translates to “fish lizards”) dominated the seas beginning in the early Triassic period, about 251 million years ago, and they lived concurrently with dinosaurs until about 95 million years ago, according to the University of California Berkeley. These formidable marine reptiles mostly ate ancient, hard-shelled squid relatives, as well as some types of fish and smaller ichthyosaurs. The smallest ichthyosaur species grew to measure around 1.3 feet (0.4 meters) long, while the largest reached nearly 69 feet (21 meters) from snout to tail, according to National Geographic.
At 13 feet (4 meters) long, the Tyndall ichthyosaur is a medium-sized specimen that dates to around 129 to 139 million years ago, in the early part of the Cretaceous period (about 145 million to 66 million years ago).
Related: Image gallery: Ancient monsters of the sea
The fossil came to Maxwell’s attention when it was first found in 2009 by paleontologist Judith Pardo-Pérez, who joined Maxwell’s research group in Stuttgart shortly after the fossil’s discovery. Pardo-Pérez — now a researcher at the GAIA Antarctic Research Center at the University of Magallanes (UMAG) in Punta Arenas, Chile — and her colleagues who found the ichthyosaur specimen dubbed it “Fiona” after actress Cameron Diaz’s ogre character in the movie “Shrek” (Dreamworks, 2001), because the fossil’s preservative oxide coating turned it green, like its plucky ogre namesake.
But it took 13 years for scientists to finally excavate and study Fiona’s remains, which Maxwell said isn’t uncommon.
A helicopter prepares to lift the heavy ichthyosaur load, in front of the Tyndall Glacier. (Image credit: Alejandra Zúñiga)
“There is often a very large lag between discovery of the fossil and study of the fossil,” Maxwell explained In this case, the delay was partly due to location: the Tyndall Glacier is extremely remote, and so every fossil from the site — including 23 other ichthyosaurs that were discovered alongside Fiona — had to be carefully airlifted out by helicopter after excavation. Sadly, many more fossils were left behind. “We have almost a hundred ichthyosaurs in the Tyndall Glacier fossil deposit and many of them, unfortunately, will never be excavated, due to the difficulty of access, being in risk areas (cliff edge), and lack of funds,” Pardo-Pérez said in a statement.
Specimens like Fiona, which fossilized during pregnancy, are especially useful for paleontologists because they offer a glimpse of multiple stages in the life cycle of that species. “We can tell, for instance, how many embryos those species might have had, and how large they were at birth,” Maxwell said. The first known pregnant ichthyosaur fossil, discovered in 1749 and scientifically described in 1842, confirmed that ichthyosaurs produce live young rather than laying eggs like most modern reptiles do, she added.
Maxwell hopes that the find will help drum up enthusiasm for South American paleontology, which has historically been overlooked in favor of North American, Russian, Chinese, and Western European sites. “We really only have a picture of what’s going on in half the globe for the Mesozoic [252 million to 66 million years ago],” she said. “So these finds are very, very important to help bring a global perspective to our understanding of Cretaceous oceans.”
Pterosaurs like Dearc sgiathanach lived at the same time as dinosaurs.
Natalia Jagielska
Dearc sgiathanach was an absolute unit among Jurassic pterosaurs. Pterosaurs, also known as pterodactyls, were flying reptiles that lived alongside dinosaurs. A newly discovered fossil specimen discovered on the Isle of Skye in Scotland is the largest yet found from its time period, with an estimated wingspan of over 8 feet (2.5 meters). It’s providing new insights into the creatures’ history.
You might wonder, “How do I pronounce the Gaelic name?” The University of Edinburgh offered a guide for the second part — “jark ski-an-ach” — in a statement on Tuesday.
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Researchers discovered the fossil in 2017 during an excavation funded by the National Geographic Society. The reptile lived 170 million years ago, which makes its state of preservation all the more remarkable. Dearc had good eyesight and would have snacked on fish. The fossil still shows shiny enamel on its teeth.
University of Edinburgh Ph.D. student Natalia Jagielska shows the fossil of Dearc sgiathanach, a newly described species of pterosaur.
Stewart Attwood
“Dearc is a fantastic example of why paleontology will never cease to be astounding,” said University of Edinburgh Ph.D. student Natalia Jagielska. “Pterosaurs preserved in such quality are exceedingly rare and are usually reserved to select rock formations in Brazil and China. And yet, an enormous superbly preserved pterosaur emerged from a tidal platform in Scotland.”
Jagielska is lead author of a paper on the pterosaur published in the journal Current Biology this week.
While larger pterosaurs existed, Dearc is teaching scientists something new about what they looked like during the Jurassic. “Dearc is the biggest pterosaur we know from the Jurassic period and that tells us that pterosaurs got larger much earlier than we thought, long before the Cretaceous period when they were competing with birds, and that’s hugely significant,” said paleontologist Steve Brusatte, a co-author of the paper.
This study is just the beginning for Dearc, which was a juvenile when it died. Jagielska plans to investigate the fossil further to learn more about its lifestyle and how it flew. It’s a rare discovery, and it will keep on giving to science.
(Reuters) – A fossil jawbone peeking out from a limestone seashore on Scotland’s Isle of Skye led scientists to discover the skeleton of a pterosaur that showed that these remarkable flying reptiles got big tens of millions of years earlier than previously known.
Researchers said on Tuesday this pterosaur, named Dearc sgiathanach, lived roughly 170 million years ago during the Jurassic Period, soaring over lagoons in a subtropical landscape and catching fish and squid with crisscrossing teeth perfect for snaring slippery prey.
Its scientific name, pronounced “jark ski-an-ach,” means “winged reptile” in Gaelic.
With a wingspan of about 8 feet (2.5 meters), Dearc was the Jurassic’s largest-known pterosaur and the biggest flying creature that had inhabited Earth to that point in time. Some pterosaurs during the subsequent Cretaceous Period achieved much greater dimensions – as big as fighter jets. But Dearc shows that this scaling up had its origins much earlier.
A forensic analysis of its bones indicated this Dearc individual was not fully grown and could have had a 10-foot (3-meter) wingspan as an adult.
Dearc weighed very little – probably below 22 pounds (10 kg) – thanks to its hollow, lightweight bones and slender structure, said University of Edinburgh paleontology doctoral student Natalia Jagielska, lead author of the research published in the journal Current Biology.
It had an elongated skull and a long, stiff tail. An arsenal of sharp teeth formed a cage when it bit down on prey.
Pterosaurs, which lived alongside the dinosaurs, were the first of three vertebrate groups to achieve powered flight, appearing about 230 million years ago. Birds appeared about 150 million years ago and bats around 50 million years ago.
Pterosaurs are some of the rarest vertebrates in the fossil record owing to their fragile bones, some with walls thinner than a sheet of paper.
“Our specimen, anomalously, is well preserved – retaining its original three dimensions and being almost complete, and still articulated as it would be when alive. Such state of preservation is exceptionally rare in pterosaurs,” Jagielska said.
Up until when Dearc lived, pterosaurs generally had been modest in size, many about the size of a seagull. The prevailing wisdom among scientists had been that pterosaurs did not reach Dearc’s size until the Cretaceous, some 25 million years later, with the appearance of creatures like Huanhepterus, Feilongus and Elanodactylus. Quetzalcoatlus, appearing about 68 million years ago, boasted a wingspan of about 36 feet (11 meters), like an F-16 fighter.
“In the Cretaceous, some pterosaurs got enormous. These were some of the most superlative animals that ever lived. Dearc was not close to them in size or grandeur, but it was 100 million years older. Evolution needed time to make such giants,” University of Edinburgh paleontologist and study co-author Steve Brusatte said.
“One idea is that pterosaurs only got larger after birds evolved, when the two groups were competing with each other for the aerial niches. But Dearc tells us that pterosaurs already got to be the size of today’s largest birds even before the first birds evolved, so it throws a wrench into this idea,” Brusatte added.
In Dearc’s time, Britain was closer to the equator and existed as a series of smaller separate islands. Dearc lived alongside a menagerie of plant-eating and meat-eating dinosaurs, early mammals and marine reptiles.
Dearc was discovered in 2017, with the fossil jutting out from a limestone intertidal zone after the tide had gone down.
“We were gobsmacked,” Brusatte said. “Nothing like this had ever been found in Scotland.”
They battled the tide, first using hammers and chisels and then diamond-tipped saws. But the tide interrupted before the skeleton could be fully extracted.
“The tide came in with a vengeance, and we cried as the waves lapped over the fossil,” Brusatte said. “We thought we lost it. But we decided to come back around midnight when the tide was down again, using our headlamps and flashlights. We were shocked and relieved to see the bones still there as the waves receded.”
(Reporting by Will Dunham in Washington, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
A spectacular three-dimensional fossil of one previously unknown pterosaur has been discovered on the shoreof the Isle of Skye, off the west coast of Scotland.
With a wingspan of more than 2.5 meters (8.2 feet), it’s the biggest pterosaur ever discovered from the Jurassic period and last flapped its wings 170 million years ago. Its sharp teeth, which would have snapped up fish, still retain their shiny enamel.
In the Cretaceous period, immediately before the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, pterosaurs like Quetzalcoatlus reached the size of fighter jets, with a 12-meter (40-foot) wingspan.
However, this fossil discovery confirms pterosaurs, sometimes popularly known as pterodactyls, were already very large much earlier in their evolutionary history.
“Pterosaurs preserved in such quality are exceedingly rare and are usually reserved to select rock formations in Brazil and China. And yet, an enormous superbly preserved pterosaur emerged from a tidal platform in Scotland,” said Natalia Jagielska, a doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh. She was the lead author of a paper on the fossil that published Tuesday in the journal Current Biology.
The fossil was discovered during a field trip in 2017,after a University of Edinburgh doctoral student, Amelia Penny, spotted its jaw protruding from the rock at an area of Skye knownin Gaelic as Rubha nam Brathairean, or Brothers’ Point.
The pterosaur has been giventhe Gaelic name Dearc sgiathanach (pronounced jark ski-an-ach), which translates to “winged reptile.”
“This is a superlative Scottish fossil. The preservation is amazing, far beyond any pterosaur ever found in Scotland and probably the best British skeleton found since the days of Mary Anning in the early 1800s,” said Steve Brusatte, professor and Personal Chair of Palaeontology and Evolution in the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh.
“Dearc is the biggest pterosaur we know from the Jurassic period, and that tells us that pterosaurs got larger much earlier than we thought, long before the Cretaceous period when they were competing with birds, and that’s hugely significant.”
Anning, an unsung pioneer of paleontology, discovered the 3-meter-long (9.8-foot-long) Plesiosaurus in Dorset, southern England, in 1823. The incredible fossil, the first of the species to be found intact with its snakelike neck, wowed the world, setting in motion a dinomania that gripped Victorian England and continues to this day.
A number of astounding discoveries have been made in this area of Skye in recent years, including the footprints of Stegosaurus and other dinosaurs. Paleontologists believe it was once a subtropical lagoon and home to a thriving community of dinosaurs.
Jagielska will continue to study the skeleton to understand how the ancient creature lived and flew.
“To achieve flight, pterosaurs had hollow bones with thin bone walls, making their remains incredibly fragile and unfit to (preserve) for millions of years,” she said.
“And yet our skeleton, 160 million years on since its death, remains in almost pristine condition, articulated and almost complete … as if he were alive mere weeks ago.”
But increasingly, you don’t have to be a professional astronaut to go to space (Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa soared into orbit this week) and space agencies are, in some cases, rethinking what astronaut training means.
The European Space Agency is, for example, exploring whether it’s possible to train a person with physical disabilities. Here’s to a future when us ordinary mortals can experience space travel.
This is Katie Hunt, filling in for Ashley Strickland, in this edition of Wonder Theory.
Meet NASA’s Artemis generation.
The latest batch of astronaut candidates are an impressive bunch — the cream of some 12,000 applicants.
The six men and four women include a pilot who led the first all-woman F-22 formation in combat, a former member of the national and Olympic cycling teams, and an emergency medicine physician who served as a first responder during the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
The grueling two-year training course includes developing robotics skills, flying NASA’s T-38 training jets, and training underwater for spacewalks. Among those who pass may be the next humans to lift off to the moon and, perhaps, the first to set foot on Mars.
The night sky
You don’t have to be an astronaut to be awed by space. Find a dark corner of your neighborhood and look up.
December offers the last chance to see a new, ultrafast comet swing by Earth — and it’s the best and brightest of the year.
The comet was first discovered in January by astronomer Greg Leonard. The celestial object has likely spent the last 35,000 years traveling toward the sun. Once it makes a close pass of our star on January 3, we won’t be seeing the comet ever again.
As the comet nears the sun, it brightens, which is why the weeks leading up to this event make the comet easier to see.
Mission critical
A striking steel box perched on a granite plain in the Australian state of Tasmania will tell future civilizations how humankind created the climate crisis — and whether we failed or succeeded to address it.
Designed to have thick steel walls, battery storage and solar panels, the bus-size structure will be indestructible and is meant to outlive humans, the developers of “Earth’s Black Box” say. It will collect and store climate research, data sets, news reports and interactions relating to the health of our planet — even tweets.
While the box’s construction won’t be completed until next year, hard drives have been recording algorithm-based findings and conversations since the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in November.
Other worlds
A planet has been found orbiting in a double-star system that is so hot and massive that some astronomers didn’t think a planet could exist around it.
Ten times as big as Jupiter, it’s one of the most enormous planets ever found, and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile was able to capture this image of it.
This exoplanet discovery is prompting a rethink of how planetary systems form. It turns out that our own solar system might not be that typical.
Fantastic creatures
With a massivewingspan nearing 40 feet (12 meters), the pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus is the largest known airborne animal to have lived upon our planet.
Once memorably described to CNN as “giant flying murder heads,” the ancient reptiles took to the sky like a fighter jet off an aircraft carrier — punching 8 feet (2.4 meters) off the ground before flapping huge wings.
But figuring out exactly how these creatures flew has taken almost a half century. Their light, hollow bones — potato chip-like in texture — are very difficult to excavate without damaging them.
The wonder
More stories that wowed us this week:
— An exceedingly rare sea turtle ended up on a Welsh beach more than 4,700 miles (7,564 kilometers) from its home after getting caught in currents whipped up by Storm Arwen. It wasn’t the only marine creature displaced by the storm.
— A sleeping bag, developed in conjunction with outdoors outfitter REI, that pulls fluids away from the brain could help with one of the perils of long-haul space travel.
— A skeleton with a nail though its heel is the first example unearthed in northern Europe of the Roman practice of crucifixion, according to archaeologists.
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