Flying reptiles: Discover the remains of a prehistoric creature

Project leader Leonardo Ortiz said: ‘This species is similar in length to the giraffe, and its wings are’ beyond the scope of our biological understanding ‘.

The remains of this bird have been preserved in the Andes rocks for 86 million years, meaning that this flying creature lived during the same period with the dinosaurs.

Artis was one of the first archaeologists to discover the fossils of these reptiles during excavations in Argentina in 2012.

He chose the name “Danadostrocon Amaru” for this species; Because it combines the words death and dragon in Greek.

“It seems appropriate to call it that … it’s a dragon of death,” Artis said in an earlier interview.

It is believed that this animal was one of the first hunters to fly in the prehistoric sky on Earth before the evolution of birds and use its wings to hunt prey.

Despite this, Artis told the BBC that the hunter may have spent most of his life on Earth.

The details of the prehistoric way of life of this species are still limited, but Artis pointed out that a pair of these species were found together in different sizes as evidence that this type of predator lived in groups.

These terrifying reptiles lived in a catastrophic event about 20 million years before an asteroid collided with Earth, which led to the extinction of three-quarters of the animal and plant species, marking the end of the Cretaceous.

Also in 2017, fossils of an old pterosaur from the Jurassic period, 170 million years ago, were discovered on the Scottish island of Sky with wingspan of 2.5 meters (8 feet).