Chile: Pterosaur graveyard found in Atacama Desert

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Rare Find: Paleontologist at Tormento Hill in the Atacama Desert

Photo: Universidad de Chile / REUTERS

A Chilean research team says it has found a rare graveyard with well-preserved bones of flying reptiles.

They circled over the Atacama Desert more than 100 million years ago.

According to the scientists, the fossils belong to pterosaurs.

These flying creatures coexisted with dinosaurs, had large wingspans, and fed by filtering water through long, thin teeth, much like flamingos.

The group, led by Universidad de Chile researcher Jhonatan Alarcon, had been searching for pterosaurs for years.

According to their own information, however, this find exceeded their hopes.

Preserve bones in three dimensions

"This is of global importance because such finds are quite rare," Alarcon said.

"The remains of pterosaurs that have been found are isolated almost everywhere in the world." The discovery of this cemetery will allow the researchers to examine not only the anatomy of the pterosaurs, but also their behavior.

"We could find out how the groups of these animals were made up, whether they were raising their young or not," he said.

The bones found were also surprisingly well preserved.

"Most of the pterosaur bones found so far are flattened and broken," said David Rubilar, director of the department of paleontology at the Chilean National Museum of Natural History.

"But we were able to recover three-dimensional bones from this site." That will help the researchers to better understand the anatomy of the pterosaurs.

The site is about 40 miles from another dig site where more pterosaur fossils would be found.

The discovery supports the group's hypothesis that pterosaurs were once common in what is now northern Chile.

ak/Reuters