by A new dinosaur-like species has been discovered in Scotland, giving palaeontologists a valuable insight into animal life in the Middle Jurassic.
Researchers from the UK’s Natural History Museum first noticed a few bones sticking out of boulders during a field trip to the Isle of Skye in 2006. That fossil has now been identified as a new species of pterosaur, named ‘Ceoptera evansae ‘.
These flying reptiles – pterosaur literally translates as ‘lizard wing’, like helicopter means ‘spiral wing’ – existed from the Late Triassic until the same extinction event that killed the dinosaur about 66 million years ago. But their sparse fossil record during the Middle Jurassic leaves little in the dark about how they came to be.
“This new species is the first of its particular group to be found in Scotland, and is only the second flying reptile to be named from the country,” said the NHMProfessor Paul Barrett, who led the discovery trip and co-authored the new paper describing the species. “It shows that these animals were much more widespread than would otherwise be known.”
With an estimated wingspan of 1.6 metres, Ceoptera evansae took to the skies above rich fauna during the Middle Jurassic of Scotland around 165 million years ago. Experts already know about ancient aquatic turtledinosaurs, fossil mammals, salamanders and other pterosaurs.
‘A winged lizard‘, as described in 2022, was the first flying reptile to be named from Scotland, following the discovery of its remarkably well-preserved remains on the Isle of Skye in 2017. Both Derarc and Ceoptera represent a much richer diversity of pterosaurs during of the Jurassic period than previously noted.
Why is pterosaur evolution shrouded in mystery?
Long before birds flew, pterosaurs were the earliest vertebrates to evolve powered flight – on wings made of skin membrane and muscle.
Because their bones are so fragile, there aren’t many pterosaur fossils at all. They didn’t spend as much time on land near rivers and lakes, where there were dinosaurs fossils usually form.
“Most of what we know about pterosaurs, especially in the Early and Middle Jurassic, comes from a handful of sites called Lagerstätten [from the German word for deposits] where fossil preservation is exceptional,” Barrett explained.
“Almost everything we know about pterosaur biology and evolution comes from just eight or nine of these key areas around the world.”
After comparing Ceoptera with other pterosaurs, the palaeontologists believe that it belongs to a group called darwinopterans, which straddles the transition between the early pterosaurs and the later pterodactyloids.
Their bony discovery – with its less distinctive toe, for example – provides some valuable insights into how, when and where this evolution occurred.
“The new species fits very well within the darwinopterans and helps to expand the geographic range of the group from well-preserved material in Co. China for the UK and Argentina,” Barrett added. “It also shows that these reptiles appeared in the Early Jurassic, which is much earlier than previously known.”
Experts now think that the darwinopterans lived for about 25 million years alongside a rich variety of other pterosaurs, including Lizards. Currently the only places where this rare overlap has been found in the fossil record are China and the UK.
How was Ceoptera evansae excavated?
There is a gap of 18 years between the bones being found on Skye and their description published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. this week, the focus is on the hard work of studying fossils.
The beach near Elaghól on the south-west coast of the island where the fossil was found is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, meaning the team could only collect specimens from rocks that had fallen naturally.
“As we crawled over these boulders to examine them for fossils, we noticed some bones sticking out,” Barrett recalled. The top of this rock was collected and returned to the NHM in London, where a conservator spent over a year exposing the bones through acid preparation and other techniques.
Lead author Dr Liz Martin-Silverstone, a paleontologist from the University of Bristol, described the excitement of finding more bones embedded in the rock than first met.
“It brings us one step closer to understanding where and when the more advanced pterosaurs evolved,” she told the NHM.
There were enough bones to identify this once-free creature as belonging to a new species.
Ceoptera was so named from the Scottish The Gaelic word for fog, ‘ceò’, as the Isle of Skye is known as Mist Island.
The specific name ‘evansae’, which comes after the genus, pays tribute to Professor Susan Evans from University College London, who introduced the team to the Isle of Skye where Ceoptera evansae was seen. And so ‘misty wing’ has entered the species list.
