An amateur palaeontologist-cum-avocado farmer discovered a collection of fossilized bones in Western Queensland, Australia, which have recently been identified as a new species of Pterosaur.
Knewz.com has learned that the recently discovered species of Pterosaurs would have been a "fearsome" predator some 100 million years ago.
Kevin Petersen, who is both an avocado farmer and the curator of the Kronosaurus Korner Fossil Museum in Queensland, discovered the bones back in 2021.
A team from Curtin University in Perth studied the bones and noticed that the structure of the teeth is significantly different from other discovered pterosaur specimens, thus concluding that it is a new species.
The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature, wherein they named the newly discovered species Haliskia peterseni, honoring the name of Petersen, the man who originally discovered the bones.
"Haliskia can be distinguished from all other anhanguerian pterosaurs based on two dental characters: the 4th and 5th tooth pairs are smaller than the 3rd and 6th, and the 2nd and 5th alveoli are smaller than 3–4 and 6–8. Moreover, the hyoid is 70% the total length of the mandible.," the research paper explained.
The paper also mentioned that the bones discovered by Petersen make Haliskia the most complete specimen of pterosaur fossil ever discovered in Australia.
"Haliskia is 22 percent complete, making it more than twice as complete as the only other known partial pterosaur skeleton found in Australia," study lead author Adele Pentland, a PhD candidate at Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said in a statement via CNN.
She added that Petersen's specimen includes "complete lower jaws, the tip of the upper jaw, 43 teeth, vertebrae, ribs, bones from both wings and part of a leg," along with "very thin and delicate throat bones, indicating a muscular tongue, which helped during feeding on fish and cephalopods."
Pentland said that she had not expected the fossil to be in such good shape, and lauded Petersen for his “careful preparation” of the remains.
Regarding the new species of pterosaur, Pentland explained that the Haliskia had a wingspan of around 15 feet, making it a "fearsome predator around 100 million years ago when much of central western Queensland was underwater, covered by a vast inland sea and globally positioned about where Victoria’s southern coastline is today."
She further explained that the Haliskia used to prey on fish and squid-like cephalopods who had made the inland sea of Late Cretaceous Australia their home. However, the pterosaur species would have needed to come up to dry land to lay its eggs.
Although an able predator itself, the Haliskia fell prey to large marine reptiles such as Kronosaurus, "whose skull alone would have measured 2.4 meters (7.9 feet) in length," per CNN.
Petersen's discovery is one of the few sets of pterosaur bones found in Australia.
Noting the significance of this discovery, the paper wrote, "The new Australian pterosaur attests to the success of Anhangueria during the latest Early Cretaceous and suggests that the Australian forms were more taxonomically diverse and palaeobiogeographically complex than previously recognized."
Petersen said in a statement that he is "thrilled" to know that his discovery turned out to be a new species of pterosaur, "as my passion lies in helping shape our modern knowledge of prehistoric species."
As of now, the exciting find will find its place among the collection of fossils at Queensland's Kronosaurus Korner Fossil Museum.