Discovery in the Atacama Desert: First confirmed pterosaur find in South America

Drawing of the pterosaur species Lacusovagus: The species discovered in Chile may have looked similar - only slightly smaller.

Photo: A9999 DB University of Portsmouth / dpa

Pterosaurs did not only populate the northern hemisphere.

After the discovery in the Chilean Atacama Desert, archaeologists from the University of Chile have now been able to confirm that the flying dinosaurs also lived on the prehistoric supercontinent of Gondwana around 160 million years ago.

Today this forms, among other things, the land mass of Latin America.

The researchers discovered the pterosaur of the genus Rhamphorhynchus as early as 2009. After analyzing the fossilized remains, they have now confirmed their assumption.

The animal had a wingspan of up to two meters, a long tail and a pointed snout with sharp, forward-pointing teeth.

It is the most common pterosaur species ever found.

The find shows that "the distribution of this group was greater than previously known," said Jhonathan Alarcón-Muñoz of the University of Chile.

According to Alarcón-Muñoz, most of the known finds of the pterosaur come from the northern hemisphere, especially from Europe.

The discovery of the fossils was published in the quarterly scientific journal "Acta Palaeontologica Polonica".

Fossilized remains of pterosaurs of the genus Rhamphorhynchus have also been found in Germany.

American scientists tried years ago to reconstruct the brains of fossil pterosaurs.

Certain regions related to the sense of balance were significantly more pronounced in pterosaurs than in modern birds.

sug / afp