Scientists say a fossilised section of beak found in the UK is from the world’s largest toothed pterosaur.
The fossil, dated to 100 million years ago, was kept at London’s Natural history Museum but had not been thoroughly studied.
Using the fragment to reconstruct the extinct beast, experts estimated that its wingspan measured up to 7m.
They say it is the “first substantial evidence for such large pterosaurs in the Early Cretaceous Period”.
David Martill from the University of Portsmouth and David Unwin from the University of Leicester reported the discovery in the journal Cretaceous Research.
Known as pterodactyls to many, winged reptiles from the order Pterosauria first appear in the fossil record 215 million years ago.
“Early pterosaurs were relatively small, with wing-spans not much bigger than a crow,” explained Dr Martill
“These early pterosaurs all had a mouth full of teeth, usually small at the back and larger at the front.”
However, fossil finds have shown that in the late Jurassic Period pterosaurs diversified greatly, with two groups losing their teeth and becoming land-based giants.
For example, the remains of the huge, toothless Hatzegopteryx – discovered in Transylvania – indicated an animal with a wingspan of 12m.
But until this discovery, toothed species were thought to have been much smaller, with a maximum wingspan of 5m.
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