Mini-Fossils: Flying Reptile & Island Dino

Perhaps they all owned iPods Nanos? Small cute fossil finds pointing to pygmy versions of extinct forms appear to be in the news lately. Being tiny goes back a long way.

A new fossil species of flying reptile with a wingspan of less than a foot across (30cm) has been discovered in China. The nearly complete skeleton was unearthed in fossil beds from northeastern China.

One of the smallest pterosaurs ever discovered, the new species has been named Nemicolopterus crypticus, which means “hidden flying forest dweller.”

Meanwhile, the discovery of a small dinosaur off the coast of the United Kingdom has been in the news lately too. The findings have shaken up old thoughts about the Bristol dinosaur, Thecodontosaurus. It has now been shown to live on subtropical islands around Bristol, instead of in a desert on the mainland as previously thought.

According to media accounts, the new research could explain the dinosaur’s small size of about 6 ft (2 m) in relation to its giant 30 ft (10 m) mainland equivalent, Plateosaurus. Like many species trapped on small islands, such as the ‘hobbit’ Homo floresiensis of Flores and pygmy elephants on Malta, the Thecodontosaurus may have been subjected to island dwarfing.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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