By Will Dunham
(Reuters) – Long ago, in the skies above the shallow Eromanga Sea, which once covered what is now arid interior Australia, hovered a formidable pterosaur – a flying reptile – sporting a bony crest at the tip of its upper and lower jaws and a mouth full of spine-shaped teeth, ideal for capturing fish and other marine prey.
Scientists announced the discovery in the Australian state of Queensland of fossils of this creature, which lived alongside dinosaurs and various marine reptiles during the Cretaceous period. Named Haliskia peterseni, its remains are the most complete of any pterosaur ever discovered in Australia.
It had a wingspan of 4.6 meters and lived about 100 million years ago, making Haliskia slightly larger and older – about 5 million years – than the Australian pterosaur Ferrodraco, whose discovery was announced in 2019.
Haliskia means “sea ghost,” and this creature may have been a frightening sight flying above the waves.
“The Eromanga Sea was a huge inland sea that covered large parts of Australia when this pterosaur was alive, but both have disappeared. The ghost of both is evident from the fossils found in the area,” said Adele Pentland, a PhD student in palaeontology at Curtin University, in Australia, and lead author of the study published this week in the journal Scientific Reports.
Pterosaurs’ fragile skeletons do not lend themselves well to fossilization. For Haliskia, 22% of the skeleton was unearthed, with a complete lower jaw, tip of the upper jaw, throat bones, 43 teeth, vertebrae, ribs, bones from both wings and part of a leg.
“We inferred the presence of a muscular tongue based on the relative length of the throat bones compared to the length of the jaw,” Pentland said.
“In many other pterosaurs, the throat bones are 30% or 60% the length of the lower jaw, while in Haliskia the throat bones are 70% the length of the lower jaw. Haliskia may have had an advantage and been able to capture live prey in its jaws,” Pentland added.
Pentland said she was “surprised” that the Haliskia specimen preserved throat bones. “They are as thin as a piece of spaghetti and are complete from edge to edge,” Pentland said.
The remains of Haliskia are more complete than those of Ferrodraco. Both are members of a group of pterosaurs called anhanguerians, known from remains found in China, the United States, Brazil, England, Spain and Morocco. The other three named Australian pterosaurs are only known from partial jaw bones, Pentland said.
After dying, the body of the Haliskia individual ended up buried under sediments at the bottom of the Eromanga Sea, allowing it to fossilize. The creature’s name also honors Kevin Petersen, an avocado farmer who became a curator at the Kronosaurus Korner museum and discovered its remains in 2021.
Pterosaurs were the first of three groups of vertebrates to achieve powered flight, appearing around 230 million years ago. Birds emerged about 150 million years ago and bats about 50 million years ago. Pterosaurs were wiped out in the same mass extinction event that doomed the dinosaurs, as well as their bird descendants, 66 million years ago, following an asteroid collision.
“Pterosaurs occupied several ecological niches, with small pterosaurs feeding on insects, while others were piscivores feeding on fish, while others were scavengers. The smallest pterosaurs had wingspans of about 25 cm (10 inches), while the largest Pterosaurs had wingspans that rivaled small jet fighters and were the largest animals to fly the skies,” Pentland said.
Knowledge of Haliskia contributes to the understanding of life in Australia during the Mesozoic Era, when dinosaurs ruled the land.
“This discovery is significant because for many years it was assumed that Australia had very few dinosaur-era fossils,” Pentland said.
(Reporting by Will Dunham in Washington; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
