‘Frozen dragon of the north wind’ flew over North America 77 million years ago, scientists say
An artist's illustration of the Cryodrakon boreas, a new species of pterosaur that was identified in Alberta, Canada. (David Maas)
A
new species of pterosaur, a flying reptile, has been identified in the
vast, dry terrain of Canada’s badlands. On Tuesday, it was anointed as
“Cryodrakon boreas,” Greek for “Frozen dragon of the north wind.”
The
discovery may sound like something out of Westeros (who can forget Jon
Snow, beleaguered king in the north, riding Rhaegal over the icy
wilderness?) but “Game of Thrones” fans shouldn’t get too excited:
According to researchers, Cryodrakon looked less like Daenerys
Targaryen’s fire-breathing dragons than it did a giraffe-sized,
reptilian stork.
The carnivorous animal lived in modern-day Alberta during the Cretaceous period around 77 million years ago, according to a study
in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. It could grow to about 13
feet tall, with a wingspan of up to 30 feet, making it one of the
largest flying animals ever. It had no chewing apparatus, so it would
probably eat whatever was small enough to go down its gullet, including
lizards, mammals and baby dinosaurs.
Like
other pterosaurs, the Cryodrakon had quite awkward proportions, with a
long neck, huge wings and a slender head about 3.5 times the length of
its body. As one expert said, imagine a “giant flying murder head.”
Alternatively: “A pair of wings that carry around a big head for
guzzling things.”
Researchers said that while
the pterosaur’s new name was more inspired by Alberta’s frigid landscape
than it was by “Game of Thrones,” they were aware that it might elicit
some comparisons.
“Yes, we had a good, personal
chuckle about that,” said Michael Habib, a paleontologist at the
University of Southern California and a fan of the show.
François
Therrien, curator of dinosaur paleoecology at Alberta’s Royal Tyrrell
Museum of Paleontology, noted that while modern-day Alberta is known for
its harsh winters, the landscape that the Cryodrakon would have soared
over in the late dinosaur age would actually have been a tropical
paradise near a large inland sea.
The
fossils that were used to establish the Cryodrakon’s holotype — a
single specimen upon which the new species is established — were
discovered some 30 years ago in Alberta’s Dinosaur Provincial Park,
known for being one of the richest sources of dinosaur fossils in the
world. Until recently, however, the remains were thought to belong to an
already known species of pterosaur, called the Quetzalcoatlus, first
found in Texas.
Habib,
one of the few scientists in the world who has worked extensively with
Quetzalcoatlus fossils, said that when he first saw the Canadian
pterosaur four years ago, he had a hunch that it was not what he had
seen before. While its neck bones were long like a typical
Quetzalcoatlus, its proportions did not match up.
He
enlisted the help of David Hone, a specialist in pterosaur taxonomy,
the classification of organisms, who realized that the remains in
Alberta were exceptionally well preserved. The skeleton that researchers
worked with consisted of parts of the animal’s wings, legs, neck and
rib — a remarkable sample, he said, given that the bones of these types
of reptiles tend to be thin and fragile, causing them to disintegrate
over time.
“This type of pterosaur [azhdarchids] is quite rare, and most specimens are just a single bone,” Habib told SciTech Daily.
“Our new species is represented by a partial skeleton. This tells us a
great deal about the anatomy of these large fliers, how they flew, and
how they lived.”
Hone
had a “Eureka moment” early on when he discovered a particular pattern
of holes in the fossils that seemed unique, but it took him and the
other researchers several years more to cross-check the specimen with
pterosaur remains in Mongolia, France and elsewhere to confirm that this
was a new species, he said.
Now that they have, however, the possibilities for future research are expansive, Therrien said.
“I
tell my students all the time, taxonomy is the most fundamental bit of
biological science,” said Hone, director of the biology program at Queen
Mary University of London. “If you don’t know what species you’ve got,
how do you know what else is going on?”
