Pterosaur bones found in Australia reveal world’s oldest flying reptile lived there 107 million years ago

According to a research released on Wednesday, pterosaurs, the world's oldest flying reptiles, reportedly took to the skies above Australia 107 million years ago.

After looking at two fragments of ancient bone taken from Dinosaur Cove, a fossil-bearing location in the Australian state of Victoria, more than three decades ago, palaeontologists came to that conclusion.

The samples proved to be the earliest pterosaur bones ever discovered in the nation, according to the research, which was published on Wednesday in the scientific journal History Biology.

The enormous monster, which coexisted with dinosaurs throughout the Mesozoic Era, which began 252 million years ago, was the first vertebrate to acquire the capacity to fly.

Two individuals' bones were studied by specialists from Curtin University in Perth and Museums Victoria in Melbourne, including a wing bone from the first juvenile pterosaur ever recorded in Australia.

A pelvic bone fragment that has a wingspan of more than two meters (6.5 feet) was discovered. The wingspans of certain pterosaurs exceeded 10 meters (33 feet).

Palaeontologists Tom Rich and Pat Vickers-Rich from Museums Victoria Research Institute oversaw an excavation at Dinosaur Cove in the 1980s during which the Australian fossils were found.

According to CNN, the discovery showed the enormous creatures flew over Australia tens of millions of years ago, despite harsh conditions during the Cretaceous Period (145 million to 66 million years ago), when Victoria was in darkness for weeks on end. Adele Pentland, the study's lead author from Curtin University, said the discovery showed the massive creatures flew over Australia tens of millions of years ago.

In her words, "Australia was further south than it is today," and she said that the area where the two specimens were found would have been in the polar circle at the time.

Since the 1980s, less than 25 pairs of pterosaur remains from four different species have been discovered in Australia, according to her. She stated that in contrast, more than 100 sets had been collected at particular locations in countries like Brazil and Argentina.

The lack of interest in the species in the nation, according to PhD student Pentland, explained why it took three decades to confirm the current specimens—until she got her hands on them and "finally gave them the moment in the sun."

Rich, from the Museums Victoria Research Institute, said in a statement that it was "wonderful" to see the Dinosaur Cove excavation effort from the 1980s pay off.

Volunteers had dug a 60-meter tunnel under a beach rock for years before the bones were discovered.

More than 100 volunteers worked hard for ten years to find these two fossils, he continued.