14 DAY TRIAL // While conducting excavation work at a dig site in northeast China, investigators at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered the skull of what appears to be a previously-unknown species of pterosaur.
Its name means “ghost dragon hunter” in Chinese and Latin. Guidraco venator was most likely a carnivorous predator that featured a snaggle-toothed skull. The flying reptile apparently lived about 120 million years ago.
According to reconstructions attempted by the research team, the animal had a wingspan of between 13 and 16 feet (4 to 5 meters), which made it rather impressive to behold. It may have also sported a round sail on top of its head, which scientists hypothesize was used for a more stable flight.
The beast lived in the Cretaceous Period, between 145.5 and 65.5 million years ago, and most likely went extinct during the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that killed off the dinosaurs. However, without additional fossils, this remains just speculation.
“This is really an amazing fossil, but the funny thing to me is that it was found in Asia. It looks very similar but not identical to pterosaurs found in Brazil,” comments paleontologist Eberhard Frey. The expert is based at the State Museum of Natural History, in Karlsruhe, but was not a part of the study.
The research team was made up of FURJ paleontologist Alexander Kellner and CAS investigators Xiaolin Wang, Ahunxing Jiang and Xin Cheng. They wrote in a new paper that the ancient reptile was most likely an avid fish hunter, forsaking other types of prey.
G. venator is similar in build to Ludodactylus sibbicki, another species of pterosaur discovered by Frey and his team in 2003. The new finding suggests that the 40 known species of pterosaurs discovered thus far were evenly distributed on the planet.
One important thing to remember about pterosaurs is that they are not dinosaurs, though they are reptiles. The earliest known pterosaur fossil dates back to 210 million years ago, and none were found above the K-T extinction geological layer, Wired reports.