Tanis: “First Dinosaur Fossil Connected To An Asteroid Strike”

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The pterosaur egg has no equal.

Modern X-ray technology allows you to determine the chemistry of the egg shell. The egg shell was likely to have been soft and not hard. This could indicate that the mother pterosaur may have buried it in sand or other sediment, similar to a turtle.

With X-ray tomography, it is also possible to take the bones of the pterosaur chick and print them. This allows you to reconstruct the appearance of the animal. This is what Mr. DePalma did.

The baby pterosaur was likely a type azhdarchid. This group includes flying reptiles whose adult wings can reach more than 10m.

Mr. DePalma presented a special lecture on the Tanis discoveries before an audience at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He and Prof Manning present their latest data to European Geosciences Union General Assembly in May.

Dinosaurs – The Final Day with Sir David Attenborough, will air on BBC One at 18:30 BST on April 15. An updated version of the US science series Nova has been prepared for broadcast on the PBS network later in the year.