Volunteers working on Petrified Forest National Park fossils in the FossiLab at the the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (IMAGE)
Caption
Volunteers working on fossils from a Petrified Forest National Park bonebed in the FossiLab on view to museumgoers in the David H. Koch Hall of Fossils – Deep Time at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
A Smithsonian-led team of researchers have discovered North America’s oldest known pterosaur, the winged reptiles that lived alongside dinosaurs and were the first vertebrates to evolve powered flight. In a paper published today, July 7, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers led by paleontologist Ben Kligman, a Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellow at the museum, present the fossilized jawbone of the new species and describe the sea gull-sized pterosaur alongside hundreds of other fossils—including one of the world’s oldest turtle fossils—unearthed at a remote bonebed in the Arizona park.
The bonebed site is so rich in small fossils that excavating them all in the field was impossible. So the team encased large pieces of the surrounding sediment in plaster and brought them back to prepare in the lab.
Many of these sediment blocks ended up at the museum’s FossiLab, where a team of volunteers spent thousands of hours, often in view of curious museum visitors, carefully chiseling rock away from bones under the microscope.
Credit
Ben Kligman, Smithsonian.
Usage Restrictions
News media use of the photos in relation to the study is only permitted with attribution.
License
Original content