A team of researchers from Brazil discovered fossils depicting a butterfly-like head of a flying reptile that might have wandered the deserts 80 million years ago.
Museu Nacional and Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro researchers dubbed the species Caiuajara dobruskii. The team reconstructed the fossilized remains and unveiled a reptile with a bony crest on top of its head comparable to a butterfly's wings. The researchers unearthed hundreds of fossils from a single bone bed.
Study co-author and paleontologist Alexander Kellner said the evidence supports the theory that the flying reptiles were sociable with each other.
Pterosaur fossils were previously excavated in the northern part of Brazil. In the 1970s, farmer Alexandre Dobruski and his son also unearthed a huge fossil bone bed of Cretaceous Period reptiles in southern Brazil.
Kellner said the team named the reptile Caiuajara dobruskii after the geologic formation where it was discovered, the Caiuá Group, and the 1970s discoverers.
The bed where the fossils were found measured around 215 square feet, and researchers accounted that 47 adult reptiles and hundreds of juvenile reptiles were buried there.
"This was a flock of pterosaurs," Kellner told Live Science.
The younger reptiles had a wingspan measuring 2.1 feet, while adults' wingspan was around 7.71 feet. The fossils remained intact, which made it possible for the researchers to create a 3D presentation of the flying reptile's features.
Further details of the study were published in the Aug.13 issue of PLOS One.
