Nature World News
Originally Posted: December 9, 2015
A newly discovered toothy pterosaur may be a Texas native, but it is remarkably similar to its English relatives, researchers from Southern Methodist University (SMU) reveal in a new study.
Similarities between this new 94-million-year-old flying reptile, called Cimoliopterus dunni, and the already-known Cimoliopterus cuvieri in England suggests a link between the two places. That is, it seems that the animals were able to move between the two continents during the early Cretaceous, even though the North Atlantic Ocean was progressively widening at this time, according to a news release.
“The Atlantic opened the supercontinent Pangea like a zipper, separating continents and leaving animal populations isolated, so gene flow ceased and we start to see evolutionary divergence,” Timothy S. Myers, a paleontologist from SMU, explained in the release. “Animals start to look different and you see different species on one continent versus another. Pterosaurs are a little trickier because unlike land animals they can fly and disperse across bodies of water. The later ones are pretty good flyers.” READ MORE