Articles for tag: Eotephradactylus, Paleontology, Petrified Forest, pterosaur, Triassic fossils

Speculative life restoration of the early pterosaur Eotephradactylus mcintireae

Ash-Winged Dawn: Oldest North American Pterosaur Emerges from Triassic Bonebed

April Joy Jovita

A gull-sized flying reptile has emerged from fossil-rich layers of Arizona’s Petrified Forest, revealing the earliest known pterosaur in North America. Named Eotephradactylus mcintireae, this delicate creature lived 209 million years ago and shared its ecosystem with turtles, amphibians, and armored reptiles, capturing a moment of evolutionary transition before the end-Triassic extinction. A Fossil Treasure ...

A butterfly in a leaf

Ancient Butterflies and Moths: The Oldest Physical Evidence Yet

April Joy Jovita

A groundbreaking discovery has revealed the oldest physical evidence of butterflies and moths, dating back 236 million years to the Triassic period. Researchers uncovered microscopic scales from lepidopterans in fossilized dung samples, filling a 40-million-year gap in the evolutionary record of these insects. The Discovery in Argentina   Paleontologists from Argentina and the UK analyzed dung ...