Puny critter shows humble beginnings of magnificent flying reptiles

Scleromochlus, which measured about 8 inches long and likely ate insects and other small invertebrates.

Pterosaurs, the flying reptiles that thrived during the age of dinosaurs, achieved great size - some with wingspans like a fighter jet - and displayed striking anatomy including exotic head crests and a hugely elongated finger to support their wings.

While the ancestry and early evolution of these creatures have long puzzled scientists, a fresh examination of remains found in Scotland of a small reptile that lived about 230 million years ago during the Triassic Period is helping shed light on the humble origins of pterosaurs, researchers said on Wednesday.

They found that the reptile, called Scleromochlus taylori, is a close cousin of pterosaurs. It is a member of a group called lagerpetids, considered the nearest relatives of pterosaurs. Though not a direct ancestor, the researchers said Scleromochlus may look very much like the reptiles from which pterosaurs evolved.

Scleromochlus, which measured about 8 inches (20 cm) long and likely ate insects and other small invertebrates, featured a relatively large head, long and slender limbs, short torso and long tail, probably walking on two legs and standing on its toes. It did not have a lizard-like or frog-like sprawling posture as previously hypothesized.

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"It would comfortably fit in a hand," said Davide Foffa, a postdoctoral researcher in paleontology at Virginia Tech and the University of Birmingham who worked on the research while at the National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh and is lead author of the study published in the journal Nature. "Scleromochlus provides unique information about the ancestors of pterosaurs, showing that they likely derived from small-bodied land-dwelling runners."

Scleromochlus lived at about the same time as the earliest dinosaurs, predating pterosaurs by perhaps 10 million years.