» Home > In the News

Skye Pterosaur

24 February 2022
Biology

At www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10537923/ … the same story can be seen at a variety of links and websites. I've chosen the Daily Mail link because it comes with lots of images, not because of the text. That is derived from a press release and is more or less the same at every link, with some variations. What is a pterosaur – a flying reptile. The sort of thing they had on Jurassic Park movies. This particular specimen is notable for its almost complete preservation, after being slowly dug out of what would once have been mud and sediment. It was a laborious business, and took a lot of chipping at the rock. The pterosaur fossil was dug up in Scotland, on the island of Skye. It was located along the coast and the link supposes that  back in the Jurassic Skye was also on the coast. They go so far as to say pterosaurs flew up and down the coastline looking for their prey. Perhaps it was on the coast. On the other hand, Pangaea was still in the process of breaking up and it is thought the Atlantic was a very shallow sea. The fossil, however, was definitely discovered on the modern coast, a portion of the skull protruding from a limestone layer on a tidal platform. How quickly was the limestone rock formed?

The article is in Current Biology. See https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(22)00135-X.pdf

Skip to content