"The remains of pterosaurs are very rare, and the best known are from Europe, South America and Asia. These new findings are very exciting and provide a window into the world of pterosaurs in the African Cretaceous," the author said in a statement. Megan L. Jacobs, PhD candidate in geosciences at Baylor University, who led the international team of scientists responsible for the finding.
The study, published in the journal Cretaceous Research, is helping to uncover Africa's little-known evolutionary history during the time of the dinosaurs. Research finds that African pterosaurs were quite similar to those found on other continents. Their world included crocodile hunters and carnivorous dinosaurs, with few herbivores. Many predators, including jagged pterosaurs, fed on an overabundance of fish.
"For such large animals, they would have weighed very little," Jacobs said. "Their wingspan was around 3 to 4 meters, with their bones almost paper thin and full of air, very similar to birds. This allowed these incredible creatures to reach incredible sizes and still be able to take off and fly through the skies" .
The pterosaurs grabbed their prey while they were in flight, using a set of large herringbone teeth to catch. Large pterosaurs like these could have foraged for hundreds of kilometers, with fossil evidence showing that they flew between South America and Africa, similar to today's birds such as condors and albatrosses, the researchers said. The specimens, identified by researchers from pieces of jaws with teeth, were obtained from fossil miners in a small town called Beggaa, on the outskirts of Erfoud, in southeastern Morocco. These villagers climb daily halfway up the side of a large cliff, known as the Kem Kem Beds, to a layer of coarse sand, the most fossil bed.
"They dig everything they find, from teeth to bones to almost complete skeletons," Jacobs said. "They then sell their findings to merchants and scientists doing field work, ensuring that villagers earn enough money to survive while we get new fossils to describe. These pterosaur fragments are unique and can be easily identified, if you know what to look for."
One of the species, Anhanguera, was previously only known to be from Brazil. Another, Ornithocheirus, has so far only been found in England and Central Asia. This year's finding brings to five the total number of jagged pterosaurs whose remains have been found in Kem Kem beds, with the first described in the 1990s and the second last year, Jacobs said. The specimens will be part of an acquisition in a museum in Morocco.