New Pterosaur’s Jawbone Found in Storage Cabinet

LiveScience, January 10 2011.

In a dark corner of a storage cabinet, a pterosaur was waiting for Victoria Arbour. Well, at least its jawbone was. Arbour identified the piece of jawbone, which has been in the University of Alberta fossil collection for years, as a new species of the ancient flying reptile.

When she first pulled the bone fragment out of the cabinet, Arbour was stumped. “It could have been from a dinosaur, a fish or a marine reptile,” she said in a statement. The bone was discovered on Hornby Island, off the coast of Vancouver. Arbour studied the bone for months before identifying it as a pterosaur. Read More >