By Stephanie
Pappas, Live Science Contributor | January 2, 2019
08:37am ET
As if a
spear-like beak and huge leathery wings weren't freaky enough, a newly discovered
species of Jurassic
pterosaur also had a mouthful of fangs.
Klobiodon
rochei was a flying reptile that lived around 166 million years ago in
what is now south-central England. Researchers discovered the new species among
bone fragments taken from a layer of slate about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from
the city of Oxford.
"Klobiodon has
been known to us for centuries, archived in a museum drawer and seen by dozens
or hundreds of scientists, but its significance has been overlooked because
it's been confused with another species since the 1800s," paleontologist
Michael O'Sullivan of the University of Portsmouth, said
in a statement. O'Sullivan and his colleagues discovered that
the bones belonged to a new species while combing through more than 200
specimens from the English slate layer in order to fit them all into a family
tree. [Photos of
Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs]
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