Postmortem Reveals Explanation for Pterosaur Infants’ Tragic Dying

Two child pterosaurs that died 150 million years in the past have helped scientists uncover the prehistoric occasion that claimed their lives and formed their preservation.

Researchers from the University of Leicester say the fossilized stays of the tiny flying reptiles—nicknamed “Lucky” and “Lucky II”—present accidents in line with demise in a violent storm.

Their research, printed within the journal Current Biology, means that these toddler pterosaurs had been struck down by highly effective gusts of wind that fractured their wings mid-flight and despatched them plummeting right into a stormy lagoon.

Their bones had been later preserved within the fantastic muds of what’s now the Solnhofen Limestones of Germany. The Solnhofen Limestones are an instance of a so-called Konservat-Lagerstätten, by which fossils are terribly well-preserved.

Perfect Conditions for Fossilization

The discovery sheds mild on a long-standing thriller: why fossils of younger, delicate pterosaurs are widespread within the Solnhofen deposits, whereas grownup specimens that usually fossilize simpler are uncommon and normally fragmentary.

Researchers now consider storms not solely prompted many of those deaths but additionally created the distinctive circumstances essential to protect the small our bodies so effectively.

“Pterosaurs had incredibly lightweight skeletons. Hollow, thin-walled bones are ideal for flight but terrible for fossilization,” research writer and paleontologist Rab Smyth of the University of Leicester stated in an announcement.

“The odds of preserving one are already slim and finding a fossil that tells you how the animal died is even rarer.”

Lucky and Lucky II, each with wingspans underneath eight inches , present near-identical accidents: a clear, slanted fracture within the humerus—one within the left wing, the opposite in the fitting.

The symmetrical nature of the breaks, together with their angle and lack of different skeletal injury, signifies the hatchlings seemingly encountered highly effective winds that twisted their wings, breaking the bones in flight.

Once incapacitated, the child pterosaurs drowned within the storm-driven waves and rapidly sank to the lagoon’s backside, the place fantastic sediments quickly buried their stays. This quick burial shielded their bones from scavengers and decay, leaving the skeletons in pristine situation.

The Solnhofen Limestones are recognized for his or her detailed fossil preservation, however the prevalence of small, younger pterosaurs there had lengthy puzzled paleontologists.

Fossilization usually favors massive, sturdy animals, making the Solnhofen infants a scientific anomaly. It is now understood that bigger adults could have averted the storms or decayed earlier than fossilization may even happen.

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Reference

Smyth, R. S. H., Belben, R., Thomas, R., & Unwin, D. M. (2025). Fatal accidents in neonatal pterosaurs and selective sampling within the Solnhofen fossil assemblage. Current Biology.