A mysteriously large pterosaur finally has an identity

One pterosaur species gave itself quite the makeover as it grew older and larger.

Scientists have spent more than a century wondering if a large and anatomically quirky flying reptile fossil represented a distinct species from its much smaller peers. Not so, researchers report January 2 in PeerJ. The Jurassic “giant,” they argue, is a superlative for this species. The findings help reveal how the extinct fliers may have warped physically and ecologically over their lives.

Rhamphorhynchus was a snaggle-toothed pterosaur that lived in parts of what is now Europe and Africa during the Jurassic Period roughly 150 million years ago. It’s one of the best-known pterosaurs, with well over 100 fossilized remains known to science. 

But one nearly complete fossil skeleton unearthed in the mid-1800s from limestone deposits in southern Germany stood out from the rest. Most adult Rhamphorhynchus had a wingspan in the 1-meter range, comparable to that of a crow. But this special fossil was far larger, with an eaglelike wingspan. The fossil had initially been treated as a distinct species, but in 1995, one scientist proposed that all known Rhamphorhynchus instead belonged to a single species, R. muensteri. Yet the conspicuously king-sized example left lingering doubts, says David Hone, a paleontologist at Queen Mary University of London.

“This thing is big and weird,” he says. “Maybe this is a different species, and we’ve not really looked at it properly.”