Ancient 'flying reptile' with 'extended skin wings' discovered in quarry

AN ANCIENT reptile has been discovered by a university student in Somerset, England.

The flying reptile, called kuehneosaurs, dates back to about 200 million years ago.

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The discovery was made by master's student Mike Cawthorne from the University of Bristol.

Cawthorne was researching numerous reptile fossils from limestone quarries when he came across the unique discovery.

Hundreds of millions of years ago, the quarries formed the largest subtropical island in the world, known as Mendip Palaeo Island.

Kuehneosaurs resembled lizards, but were more closely related to the ancestors of crocodiles and dinosaurs.

They were such small animals that they fit neatly in the palm of a hand.

“All the animals were small,” Cawthorne said. “I had hoped to find some dinosaur bones, or even their isolated teeth, but in fact I found everything but dinosaurs.”

“The collections I studied were made in the 1940s and 1950s, when the quarries were still active and paleontologists could visit and see fresh rock faces and talk to the quarries,” he added.

There were two known species of kuehneosaurs: one with extended wings and the other with shorter wings.

The wings were made of a layer of skin and extended over their elongated side ribs, allowing them to dive between trees.

“It took a lot of work to identify the fossil bones, most of which were separated and not in a skeleton,” explains Mike Benton, professor of earth sciences from Bristol.

“However, we have a lot of comparative material and Mike Cawthorne was able to compare the isolated jaws and other bones with more complete specimens from other sites in Bristol.”

Benton added that the discovery shows that Mendip Palaeo Island was home to several small reptiles that fed on the plants and insects.

“He didn't find any dinosaur bones, but it's likely they were there because we've found dinosaur bones at other sites from the same geological era around Bristol,” Benton noted.

The study was published earlier this week in the journal Proceedings of the Geologists' Association.