Scientists have made an incredible discovery which opens a window on the lives of ancient ‘winged lizards’.
A total of 215 fossilized pterosaur eggs have been found in China, allowing researchers to get a sense of how babies were cared for in the early stages of their lives.
Pterosaurs lived in the Cretaceous Period 120 million years ago and are hugely important in our planet’s history because they are believed to be the first vertebrate (creatures with a backbone) to fly.
Yesterday, scientists revealed the discovery of a huge cache of eggs laid by the fish-eating Hamipterus tianshanensis – a species whose adults had a crest atop an elongated skull, pointy teeth and a wingspan of more than 3.5 metres.
The partial remains of pterosaur embryos were found in 16 of the eggs, allow scientists to examine the beasties in unprecedented detail.
Fossils of hundreds of male and female adult individuals were found alongside juveniles and eggs at a site in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
The discovery prompted scientists to claim flying lizards required a lot of love and attention when they emerged from their egg, because they were vulnerable to predators until they learned to fly.
‘We want to call this region Pterosaur Eden,’ said palaeontologist Shunxing Jiang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.
Some birds can fly on the same day they break out from the egg, while some others will need a long period of parental care. Our conclusion is that a baby Hamipterus can walk but can’t fly,’ Jiang said.
The researchers believe these pterosaurs lived in a bustling colony near a large freshwater lake, with females gathering together to lay eggs in colonies and returning over the years to the same nesting site.
They suspect the eggs and some juvenile and adult individuals were washed away from a nesting site in a storm and into the lake, where they were preserved and later fossilized.
The oblong eggs, up to about 3 inches (7.2 cm) long, were pliable with a thin, hard outer layer marked by cracking and crazing covering a thick membrane inner layer, resembling soft eggs of some modern snakes and lizards.
