Over an inland sea 100 million years ago, a great flying reptile haunted the skies.
Kyle Johnson via Unsplash
Looking out over the Eromanga Sea 100 million years ago, not every ferocious predator would be found under the surface of the water.
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Instead, one threat would come from the skies.
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The “long-vanished” sea once covered part of what is now mainland Australia when the landmass was part of Gondwana, Earth’s ancient supercontinent.
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Today, the remains of the creatures that once surrounded and filled the sea are found buried under layers of sand and dirt, including a creature that “haunted” the waters.
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In 2021, the curator of Kronosaurus Korner, a museum in Richmond, Australia, discovered fossilized bones at a dig site outside the town, according to a study published June 12 in the journal Scientific Reports and a news release from Curtin University.
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The bones were surprisingly complete, and a research team from the Curtin University School of Earth and Planetary Sciences took a closer look.
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It was a new species.
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The bones belong to an anhanguerian, a group of massive, flying reptiles known as pterosaurs, according to the study. Pterosaurs lived around the globe, researchers said, but finding skeletons is incredibly rare.
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“Careful preparation by (Kevin) Petersen (the curator) has provided the remains of the most complete specimen of an anhanguerian, and of any pterosaur, discovered in Australia to date,” study author Adele Pentland said in the release. “(The new species) is 22 percent complete, making it more than twice as complete as the only other known partial pterosaur skeleton found in Australia.”
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The team uncovered lower jaws, part of the upper jaw, 43 teeth, parts of the spine, ribs, bones from the wings and some bones of one leg, according to the study.
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They also found a hyoid apparatus, which are “delicate throat bones, indicating a muscular tongue, which helped during feeding on fish and cephalopods,” Pentland said.
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The new species’s muscular tongue would have helped it keep “live, slippery prey items” pinned to the roof of its mouth before swallowing, according to the study.
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The shape of the skull, teeth and shoulder bones confirmed the find was a new species, according to the release.
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The species was named Haliskia peterseni, the former derived from the Greek words ἅλς (háls), meaning sea, and σκῐᾱ́ (skiā́), meaning “shadow, phantom or evil spirit,” according to the study.
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“Thus, a flying creature that cast a shadow on the sea, or a phantom that haunted the long-vanished Eromanga Sea,” researchers said.
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The latter, peterseni, honors the curator responsible for the find.
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“With a wingspan of approximately (15 feet), Haliskia would have been a fearsome predator around 100 million years ago when much of central western Queensland was underwater, covered by a vast inland sea and globally positioned about where Victoria’s southern coastline is today,” Pentland said.
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The bones will go on display at Petersen’s museum, accompanying other large, prehistoric marine reptiles housed there.
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“I’m thrilled that my discovery is a new species, as my passion lies in helping shape our modern knowledge of prehistoric species,” Petersen said.
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Richmond is in north-central Queensland in eastern Australia.
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Irene Wright is a real-time McClatchy reporter. She earned a bachelor’s degree in ecology and a master’s degree in health and medical journalism from the University of Georgia and is now based in Atlanta. Irene previously worked as a business reporter at The Dallas Morning News.