It's a girl! ... pterodactyl, that is

[n2doc]

By Brian Vastag
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 20, 2011; 2:47 PM


After a farmer in northeastern China picked a fossilized flying lizard out of the ground last year and sold it to a museum, paleontologists quickly noticed a broken wing - and an egg nestled next to the animal's tail. The scientists dubbed the spectacular specimen "Mrs. T" - a contraction of "Mrs. Pterodactyl" - and are now announcing her as the first prehistoric flier to be assigned a gender.

She provides vital clues to the mating habits of the creatures that ruled the skies for 150 million years before birds appeared.

David Unwin, a paleobiologist at the University of Leicester who studied the spectacularly preserved fossil, calls it a "once-in-10 lifetimes' discovery." Unwin and colleagues published the finding in the journal Science.

The scientists who studied Mrs. T surmised that 160 million years ago, an accident snapped her wing and dumped her into a lake or stream, where she drowned with a wrinkly, leathery egg at the ready. The egg then slipped into the mud that encased her.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/20/AR2011012003348.html

[tabatha]

1. Neat stuff.

You always post interesting stuff!!

[dipsydoodle]

2. BBC News link

For fossil hunters, it represents one of those breakthrough moments.

A pterosaur has been found in China beautifully preserved with an egg.

The egg indicates this ancient flying reptile was a female, and that realisation has allowed researchers to sex these creatures for the first time.

Writing in Science magazine, the palaeontologists make some broad statements about gender differences in pterosaurs, including the observation that only males sported a head-crest.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12242596