A new genus and species of pterosaur precursor has been described from a 230-million-year-old partial skeleton found in southern Brazil.
Life reconstruction of Venetoraptor gassenae. Image credit: Caio Fantini.
The newly-discovered species lived in what is now Brazil during the Late Triassic epoch, around 230 million years ago.
Named Venetoraptor gassenae, the reptile was approximately 1 m (3.3 feet) in length and weighed between 4 and 8 kg.
The ancient creature belonged to Lagerpetidae, a family of earliest-diverging pterosaur precursors.
“Dinosaurs and pterosaurs originated in the Middle or early Late Triassic epoch, and both groups survived the end-Triassic extinction and became the numerically dominant tetrapods in land and sky, respectively, during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods,” said Federal University of Santa Maria paleontologist Rodrigo Temp Müller and his colleagues.
“As a result of a very scarce fossil record, the origins of these groups have been an obscure but strongly debated topic for decades.”
“However, a wave of recent discoveries dramatically increased our knowledge of both dinosaur and pterosaur precursors,” they said.
“It is now clear that their taxonomic diversity was considerably broader than previously thought, with several sub-clades (that is, aphanosaurs, lagerpetids and silesaurids) distributed throughout the ancient supercontinent Pangaea.”
“In spite of improvement in the fossil record of dinosaur and pterosaur precursors, their skulls and other regions of the skeleton (for example, hands) are still represented solely by fragmentary or poorly preserved specimens.”
“These knowledge gaps preclude more comprehensive ecomorphological and macro-evolutionary studies of these forerunners.”
Reconstruction of Venetoraptor gassenae’s head in left anterolateral view. Image credit: Caio Fantini.
Venetoraptor gassenae possessed a combination of unexpected features, including a sharp, raptorial-like beak and enlarged hands with scimitar-like claws.
“The unusual raptorial-like beak of Venetoraptor gassenae predates that of dinosaurs by around 80 million years,” the paleontologists said.
“In modern birds, similar beaks are attributed to various functions, such as tearing meat or eating hard fruit.”
“Associated with the large sickle-shaped claws, the beak may have been used to handle potential prey. Additionally, claws may have helped Venetoraptor gassenae climb trees.”
Skeletal anatomy of Venetoraptor gassenae. Image credit: Müller et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06359-z.
The well-preserved partial skeleton of Venetoraptor gassenae was recovered from the Upper Triassic beds of Brazil, from the same fossiliferous layers that yielded some of the oldest dinosaurs worldwide.
“Combining anatomical information of the new species with other dinosaur and pterosaur precursors shows that morphological disparity of precursors resembles that of Triassic pterosaurs and exceeds that of Triassic dinosaurs,” the researchers said.
“Thus, the ‘success’ of pterosaurs and dinosaurs was a result of differential survival among a broader pool of ecomorphological variation.”
“Our results show that the morphological diversity of ornithodirans (early relatives of dinosaurs and pterosaurs) started to flourish among early-diverging lineages and not only after the origins of dinosaurs and pterosaurs.”
The discovery is reported in a paper published this week in the journal Nature.
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R.T. Müller et al. 2023. New reptile shows dinosaurs and pterosaurs evolved among diverse precursors. Nature 620, 589-594; doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06359-z
