North America Was Once Home to a Flying 'Goddess'

A delicate jawbone unearthed in Arizona has revealed North America's oldest known pterosaur, a flying reptile no bigger than a small seagull, and provided a rare glimpse into the continent's prehistoric skies. The fossil, initially mistaken for a mammal, was unearthed in Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park in 2013 by Suzanne McIntire, a volunteer in Smithsonian's FossiLab, reports CBS News. The jawbone's distinctive teeth allowed paleontologists led by Ben Kligman of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History to confirm it belonged to a pterosaur, a close dinosaur cousin and one of the first vertebrates capable of powered flight.

The newly named Eotephradactylus mcintireae, meaning "ash-winged dawn goddess," was so small it "could have sat on your shoulder," Kligman tells Live Science. Scientists used the surrounding volcanic ash to peg its age at just over 209 million years, according to a study published Monday in PNAS. The find helps fill a gap in the fossil record before the end-Triassic extinction, a period with few preserved pterosaur remains due to their delicate bones and habitat preferences, says Kligman.

The study also details other fossils from the site, including ancient turtles, giant amphibians, and armored crocodile relatives, presenting a snapshot of an ecosystem teeming with evolutionary newcomers.