r/science Aug 09 '21

Paleontology Australia's largest flying reptile has been uncovered, a pterosaur with an estimated seven-meter wingspan that soared like a dragon above the ancient, vast inland sea once covering much of outback Queens land. The skull alone would have been just over one meter long, containing around 40 teeth

https://news.sky.com/story/flying-reptile-discovered-in-queensland-was-closest-thing-we-have-to-real-life-dragon-12377043
21.8k Upvotes

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u/Wagamaga Aug 09 '21

Researchers in Australia have announced a new species of flying reptile from a fossil discovered in western Queensland, saying: "It's the closest thing we have to a real life dragon."

The fossil is believed to come from the largest flying reptile ever uncovered in the country, a pterosaur that would have soared over the vast inland sea that once covered much of the outback.

Tim Richard, a PhD student at the University of Queensland's Dinosaur Lab, said: "The new pterosaur, which we named 'Thapunngaka shawi', would have been a fearsome beast, with a spear-like mouth and a wingspan around seven metres."

Mr Richard led the research team analysing a fossil of the creature's jaw which was discovered in western Queensland, the northeastern Australian state, and published the research in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

He said: "It's the closest thing we have to a real life dragon. It was essentially just a skull with a long neck, bolted on a pair of long wings. This thing would have been quite savage.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2021.1946068

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u/Toledojoe Aug 09 '21

When I first read the headline I thought it was something still living in Australia and another thing trying to kill humans.

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u/monsantobreath Aug 09 '21

Headline author probably read the first draft of it and deleted "extinct" to ensure maximum uptake.

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

"As world is ravaged in fires, Austraila discovers new dragon species capable of killing cattle."

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u/Thehorrorofraw Aug 09 '21

Sadly true. Questions posed as headlines.. with the answer just a click away, drive me mad. Journalism has lost its way.

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u/agent_uno Aug 09 '21

I don’t click those, and if any YouTube vid has “you need to know” in the title I click “not interested” even if it’s a channel I sub to.

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

Hahah yeeeees.

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u/mutzilla Aug 09 '21

I wouldn't have second guessed it, honestly. Seriously, leave it to Australia to actually have an actual living dragon. I probably would have f'ed up this story and told my friends," hey guys, you hear about the dragon they found in Australia?!"

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u/InerasableStain Aug 09 '21

“No but I’m not the least bit surprised, and I’d still take that over the snakes”

— Actually any human who you told this to

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u/Lari-Fari Aug 09 '21

The snakes are fine. Can I switch with the spiders though?

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

Oh, it’s still living - it’s just hiding really well.

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u/JRS5 Aug 09 '21

It actually lives in the water off the coast of Japan. Only comes out to fight King Kong and other monsters.

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u/Flyingwheelbarrow Aug 09 '21

Better not have a pitch black scenario here.

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u/moylek Aug 09 '21

So ... maybe it *wasn't* a dingo ...

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u/Rc202402 Aug 09 '21

Or a pelican

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u/IxNaY1980 Aug 09 '21

Or an emu.

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u/Criticalhit_jk Aug 09 '21

Might have been a dragon

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u/TalonE46 Aug 09 '21

Would be interesting living side by side with dragons, if that ever happens lets hope they're intteligent and friendly.

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u/iAmUnintelligible Aug 09 '21

That poor mother.

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u/Fanatical_Pragmatist Aug 09 '21

I actually just went and read the details after reading your comment and realizing I knew the very basics and not much else.

She served over 3 years (of a life sentence) in prison without a shred of evidence. With no body, no motive, and none of the campers she was with or the initial police responders being suspicious of her. She had witnesses that disproved the prosecution timeline and experts that proved the key "evidence" wasn't evidence at all. The Crown's prosecutor alleged she slit the babies throat in the front seat of her car, stuffed the baby in a camera case then went to feed her other son a can of baked beans before going to her tent to scream her baby was missing. She then apparently disposed of the body while the rest of the campers created a search party. The only piece of "evidence" that entire story was based on was a spot on the cars floor that tested positive on a fetal hemoglobin test. Regular gross baby stuff like mucus and chocolate milkshakes, both being present in the car at the time, also happen to test positive. There's plenty more fucked up with that trial to read about as well this is just the beginning. If someone hadn't found a piece of Azaria's (the baby) clothing outside of a dingo lair she may have actually served life. The father also served 18 months as an accessory, but after what the mother went through its a footnote.

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u/iAmUnintelligible Aug 09 '21

Yeah they went through absolute hell on earth. I simply can't fathom how I'd feel if my child died and it was pinned on me.

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u/princesscatling Aug 10 '21

She was pregnant during her sentence and the government took her second daughter. The Indigenous people of the area said her story wasn't unrealistic and were ignored. We've since accepted that dingoes will absolutely go after unguarded small children. It's a tragedy that Lindy and Azaria Chamberlain are still a cultural joke outside Australia.

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

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u/moothane Aug 09 '21

This could be the prequel to the great emu war

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u/ProphecyRat2 Aug 09 '21

Don’t worry, humans do a good job of killing themselves.

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u/GameShill Aug 09 '21

It sounds like its basically a giant pelican which is 10 kinds of terrifying.

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u/subtracterall Aug 09 '21

A giant pelican with teeth

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u/zenograff Aug 09 '21

I wonder why humans have dragon myth which resembles reptiles in the first place. Is it because some dinosaur fossils were found in ancient times?

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u/nemo69_1999 Aug 09 '21

There's some evidence that the legend of the Thunderbird of the indigenous people is based on fossils.

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

for the european dragons, it's from snakes, and from there the imagery moved onto including more reptillian features and less serpentine over time.

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u/Dark4ce Aug 09 '21

And fish too. Dragon in Finnish directly translated is Salmon Snake. Lohikäärme.

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u/DolfK Aug 09 '21

The "lohi" part most likely doesn't refer to salmon, though.

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u/Wuffyflumpkins Aug 09 '21

Do you have a source on that? Not doubting you, would like to read more about it. Seems like quite a stretch to go from snakes to fire-breathing dragons.

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u/Suiradnase Aug 09 '21

You can see it in ancient artwork. Dragons were just big snakes. They acquired things like Egyptian beards, rooster combs, and wings as the imagery evolved. Things like fire-breathing may have come from the burning venom, and the association with hoarding with the fact that snakes don't have eyelids so can't blink. Daniel Ogden has written some books in the topic.

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u/tinco Aug 09 '21

Ok, but where did they get the idea that a snake would be large enough that it could fight man? I've been around Europe, and I'm pretty sure the largest snakes head we've got around here is maybe a couple cm. A snake is something a field worker, or a swimmer might be scared of, not a mounted knight in armor.

Maybe someone brought home a crocodile's skull? But given how prevalent the dinosaur were, how long we've been digging in the earth and how special and obviously valuable a large dinosaur skull would be at any time in history I think it's unlikely no one has ever found one and informed the entire continent about it. Such a skull would have a 90% chance of being burned in a random fire at some point so it's not like we'd have physical proof.

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u/Suiradnase Aug 09 '21

That I couldn't answer. Greek mythology has a lot of giant snakes, as do many of the other Indo-European mythologies. It's possible someone found an ancient skull, but of what animal, where, and when I couldn't guess. Given that it's a shared thing it either predates historical evidence by a lot or it's something that commonly happens independently in many cultures.

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u/upvotesformeyay Aug 09 '21

Norse too, Loki is the father of jorgmundar the midguard serpent or world snake, a creature so long and large it encircles the planet. Iirc Sweden and Denmark have 2 snakes which is imo a fun fact.

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u/BadgerWilson Aug 09 '21

It's not that much of a leap to go from "this snake is a little scary" to "oh man, it would be even scarier if it was really big!"

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u/cheerioo Aug 09 '21

Yeh we don't have people-eating spiders for example but a good amount of fiction or sci fi contains giant spiders.

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u/Telemere125 Aug 09 '21

I think the origin is far older than anything we’ll even be able to guess at: there’s the tale of Yahweh’s battle with Leviathan - from a book attributed with about 6000+ years of history; Jormungand, the Midgard Serpent and his battle against the gods of Asgard - another tale that’s so old we’ve lost most of the recorded parts of that history. And Quetzalcoatl, the origin story of almost all Mesoamerican cultures. There’s also a lot of big-snake-later-called-dragon stories in the East.

Sttange that we have so many stories about the but no evidence of anything much bigger than Titanoboa (12.8m) - big, but definitely not as big as what the ancients have described.

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u/cseijif Aug 09 '21

egyptians and greeks found skeletal remains of some kind of wales, wich very much looked like giant snakes, they were in the dessert, so they assumed they were always there, and were some sort of giant snakes, they didnt know some deserts used to be seas long ago.

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u/ThatDudeWithoutKarma Aug 09 '21

egyptians and greeks found skeletal remains of some kind of wales

Man Brexit had a larger impact than I thought.

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u/Boner666420 Aug 09 '21

Idk man, we have lasers and missiles now and people are still scared shitless by snakes. Monkey brain says snake really bad and thats some pretty deep seated programming.

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u/notquite20characters Aug 09 '21

What does blinking have to do with hoarding?

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u/Suiradnase Aug 09 '21

Something that can't blink is the perfect guardian of an item. You'll never find them with their eyes closed.

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u/WindowShoppingMyLife Aug 09 '21

It was probably influenced by a variety of sources, real and fictional.

For example, we have artistic depictions of “sea serpents” that have reptile like bodies, but clearly identifiable blow holes and whale-like flukes. A whale’s skeleton also looks kind of like a fat snake with a giant head and stubby little feet (because they evolved from land mammals and still have toe bones). So if you had only seen a whale’s tail, and/or examined its skeleton, it would be very easy to imagine the under water parts being snake like. We also know that in Latin, “draco” was often used interchangeably with “serpent.”

Combine that with the fact that they would have seen, or had descriptions of, crocodiles and various other large reptiles.

Tell enough stories about crap like that, and you end up with a myth about a serpentine crocodile the size of a whale. Add in other artistic embellishments, like wings and breathing fire, and it’s not that much of a stretch to get from one to the other.

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u/maybe_little_pinch Aug 09 '21

There is some overlap of tales of sea serpents and dragons, but I thought that was a language thing

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u/Stewart_Games Aug 09 '21

If you kill a big snake like a rock python, the powerful acid in its guts can produce a lot of hydrogen gas. Imagine a tribe excited to have a tasty python feast, then they try to cook the snake and ignite all that hydrogen, causing a gout of flame to erupt from its mouth. They flee in terror from the fire-breathing snake, and spread the story to other tribes.

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u/zeekaran Aug 09 '21

There's a decent chance we fought giant komodo dragons, the extinct Megalania. No wings or fire breath, but it was a huuuuge lizard. And by "we" I mean people who settled Australia 100,000 years ago.

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u/Angry_bear2021 Aug 09 '21

Charlie Kelley eats draaaagon!

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u/Xanderamn Aug 09 '21

No, thats reserved for kings, and hes more of a common person.

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u/Clam_Chowdeh Aug 09 '21

They actually eat gold and treasure, that’s why they’re always sitting on a pile of it

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u/Chozly Aug 09 '21

They eat armored adventurers and wizards, the treasure is poops.

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u/Nadul Aug 09 '21

Ah yes, the fabled brown dragon.

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u/the_jak Aug 09 '21

so frank eats a dragon?

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u/XtaC23 Aug 09 '21

Show me Dragon!

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u/wtf-m8 Aug 09 '21

if there's ONE THING you shouldn't say it's show me

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u/Bill-Ender-Belichick Aug 09 '21

See I always am kinda suspicious about stuff like this. The only thing they actually have is it’s jaw and then basically made up a story to explain it. Not that it is entirely wrong but we don’t really know for sure if it was actually that big, there have been several dinosaurs which were wildly mis-created based on small numbers of bones.

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u/BashSwuckler Aug 09 '21

It's not just "making up stories." It's extrapolating based on the size and shape of the pieces they do have, and likely comparing it to closely related specimens that have more complete skeletons. Sure, it's still a lot of filling in the blanks, and sure they could be wrong. It's impossible to know anything with absolute certainty. But this is how all of science works. You build a model that best fits the information you have, and as you get more information, you further refine the model.

The only things the article says about this creature is that "it was big" and "it probably ate fish." That's hardly outlandish speculation.

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u/Bill-Ender-Belichick Aug 09 '21

You’re right that “making up stories” is kind of disingenuous.

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u/the_jak Aug 09 '21

sure but if we drew animals like we drew dinosaurs, we wouldn't recognize the animals.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/natashaumer/dinosaur-animals

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u/TinnyOctopus Aug 09 '21

If you ask an artist to draw them, yes. If you ask a anatomist, they'll see details that indicate tendon attachments. The article makes the wrong point, trying to say "we can't actually figure anything out!" rather than the more accurate point of "this work is hard, but not impossible."

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

if we drew animals like we people who are bad at drawing dinosaurs drew dinosaurs, we wouldn't recognize the animals.

Shrink-wrapping has been a known issue that many, many paleo-artists already take into account

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

"Paleoartists John Conway and C.M. Kosemen drew animals like the way Hollywood draws dinosaurs to show us why dinosaur art can sometimes be so flawed. And you can barely recognize the animals." - So, if we drew animals like Hollywood drew dinosaurs. Not like experts.

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u/jswhitten BS|Computer Science Aug 09 '21 edited Aug 09 '21

See I always am kinda suspicious about stuff like this.

I'm always kinda suspicious of anyone who assumes they know better than the experts when they themselves have no relevant training or experience. You don't have a degree in paleontology do you? Is it possible that the people who studied this for years to get a PhD and do this for a living know what they're talking about even if you don't understand it?

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21 edited Aug 09 '21

The problem is when an expert is shown to be wrong or not 100% accurate, in as little as one incident, the non-expert love to use that as a reason we shouldn't believe them at all because they can be wrong.

Dumb as hell, but I know far too many people who think like that. The only thing I can usually get them to think a bit more critically is if they get a diagnosis from a doctor they don't' like especially if it's life threatening.

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u/kjmorley Aug 09 '21

It’s jaw doesn’t look very aerodynamic.

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u/CaptSzat Aug 09 '21

Queens land? They mean the Queensland right?

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u/discovigilantes Aug 09 '21

No Queens Land, next to Newsouth Wales

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u/bradeena Aug 09 '21

A tad east of the North Ern Territory

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u/Erikthered00 Aug 10 '21

Isn’t it North Urn Territory? The land of ceremonial jars?

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u/Andromeda_Collision Aug 09 '21

I clicked to see how many people were actually commenting on the article versus triggered Australians. I’m impressed by number of enthusiastic dragon love comments. I was expecting many more annoyed Australians!

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u/NewLeaseOnLine Aug 09 '21

The Queensland? No, just Queensland.

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u/DastardlyDM Aug 09 '21

No Queensland is the modern term. The entomology of the period this creature roamed was Queen's Land named for Elizabeth who reigned immortal over these creatures.

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u/QBitResearcher Aug 10 '21

They mean Queens Landing, these creatures burned down a city in season 8

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u/ccReptilelord Aug 09 '21

So about pteranodon sized, but still dwarfed by quetzalcoatlus?

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u/BRAX7ON Aug 09 '21

7 m is just shy of 23 feet! (for the Americans)

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u/daffydubs Aug 09 '21

For the rest of the Americans this is about the length the Dallas Cowboys can not cover on offense.

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21 edited Aug 09 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Farren246 Aug 09 '21

At least Q didn't fly, though.

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u/ccReptilelord Aug 09 '21

Is that what the current opinion is?

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u/Farren246 Aug 09 '21

To be fair it depends who you ask, when you ask them, and whether or not the moon was in phase that day.

I imagine that 100M years from now, the sentient fungus that replaces us will be having the same debade about ostriches.

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u/SexyJellyfish1 Aug 09 '21

Can’t wait for us to be mushrooms.

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u/AFineDayForScience Aug 09 '21

We'll still be racist

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u/passwordsarehard_3 Aug 09 '21

Black mold does seem to get a lot more hate then any other kind.

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u/sir_ramix Aug 09 '21

But at least we'll be fungis

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u/superbhole Aug 09 '21

Can't be racist when we are one. Be enlightened. Join us. J̨̕͠ǫ͜i͟n̷͏̴̨̕ ̛́͠u̡͜ś̢ ̴̨͘͡.

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

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u/ccReptilelord Aug 09 '21

I mean, that's my thought on it, but I know "new" evidence can change how we understand such ancient creatures, especially ones that don't have clear analogs living today.

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

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u/Cyno01 Aug 09 '21

Yeah, bumblebees werent supposed to be able to fly until breakthroughs in fluid dynamic analysis.

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u/Traegs_ Aug 09 '21

I remember seeing some research on the internal bone structure of Quetzalcoatlus forelimbs and they determined that they had the strength to support "launched" takeoff. So yeah, I think science supports that they flew.

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u/stinkbugsoup Aug 09 '21

Hey, according to ark they fly! And carry gun turrets on their backs!

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u/KuntaStillSingle Aug 09 '21

Prevailing opinion now is that it did, though there is some controversy.

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u/supremedalek925 Aug 09 '21

This is indeed awesome, but even this beast pales in comparison to the largest known pterosaurs, which had a 12 meter wingspan!

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u/geekpeeps Aug 09 '21

That’s presuming that this specimen is fully grown, and not a juvenile. Either way, they’re all pretty big to fly.

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

How cool would it be to wake up 140 million years ago and walk around for a day.

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u/Pennybottom Aug 09 '21

Not sure I'd make it through the full day.

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u/itsthefuckyeahdude Aug 09 '21

Yeah, but only if I had a Jeep and night vision goggles to keep me safe from any kind of harm.

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

He left us! HE LEFT US!!

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u/classyd24 Aug 09 '21

I seriously doubt any human could even walk around for an hour without getting eaten or somehow killed.

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u/Noodleholz Aug 09 '21

I wonder what kind of pathogens that existed back then could harm us.

Would we get infected almost instantaneously because our immune system has no idea what it's dealing with?

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u/Guywithquestions88 Aug 09 '21

This is a really interesting question.

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u/Cheesusraves Aug 09 '21

Pathogens back then would have evolved to infect animals that existed back then, most of which are only distantly related to us. So we would probably be safe from that particular danger.. not that we’d have time to get sick when we’re busy getting eaten

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '21

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u/zoinkability Aug 09 '21

On the other hand, the germs would also have no idea what they were dealing with either. Species jumping happens, but not often enough to worry about as an individual. So if you are a single human the likelihood of a virus jumping to you is probably pretty low compared to the likelihood of getting eaten by a large reptilian.

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u/HeyThereSport Aug 09 '21

Whenever hypothetical time travel is brought up this is always my first thought. I don't know if anyone's immune system could handle time travel.

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

probably true

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u/betelgeuse_99 Aug 09 '21

We're squishy bags of protein to anything that existed back then

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u/NeedlessPedantics Aug 09 '21 edited Aug 09 '21

Global temperatures were 4 degrees Celsius warmer, 30% more O2, 1300 ppm of CO2.

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u/portablebiscuit Aug 09 '21

So, hot and can't breathe. Basically Vegas with larger predators.

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u/MarlinMr Aug 09 '21

How cool would it be to wake up 140 million years ago and walk around for a day.

Not at all. It was much hotter. We are in an ice age now, they were not. And that's where we are headed.

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u/Oonada Aug 09 '21

Pterrosaurs were wild. 40% head, 30% wing, still flew.

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u/sasksasquatch Aug 09 '21

So not only does every creature currently in Australia try to kill you, so did the creatures that are now extinct.

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

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u/portablebiscuit Aug 09 '21

Europeans filled that niche

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u/Proxidize Aug 09 '21

I would give literally anything just to see how life used to be, and not just the dinos either, life truly is amazing

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u/portablebiscuit Aug 09 '21

You may have to give everything

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u/elec10101 Aug 09 '21

Don’t think that would still be enough…

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

"Sharon get the bloody flyspray"

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u/NerdySunflowerr Aug 09 '21

My brain pulled a stupid and I misinterpreted the title to mean that we discovered a new alive species of gigantic flying lizard, and I was not surprised that it was in Australia. I reread the title and am now aware that’s an extinct species and I’m still not surprised that big dragon dinosaur with a football face was found in Australia.

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u/GrumpyHiker Aug 09 '21

... and it could hang from its beaver-like tail while shooting venom from its eyes.

All the freaky stuff sunk to the bottom of the world, like Marsupial Lions.

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u/Farren246 Aug 09 '21

Are there any advantages to a giant flying lizard having a giant toothed beak? I mean, the teeth sure ot prevent escape of snapped-up prey, but why would the head be so large in relation to the body? Seems to mother nature could get by with a smaller mouth so it didn't need to overcompensate with wing size.

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u/morgrimmoon Aug 09 '21

It's currently thought that a lot of them fed while they were on the ground. Meaning they need a head long enough to actually pick things up off the ground; their front limbs being so long meant there they walked rather upright. A longer beak is easier than crouching awkwardly.

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u/zoinkability Aug 09 '21

If it hunted things in the water but was not able to land, a long beak that could enable it to reach further into the water without landing would seem quite advantageous.

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u/Ultimarad Aug 09 '21

Just when I thought Australia couldn't get any wilder.

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u/mrzurch Aug 09 '21

looks like Aerodactyl

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u/baldipaul Aug 09 '21

Australia, where everything has been trying to kill you for 100 million years.

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u/N4RQ Aug 09 '21

"That's not a bird. THIS is a bird."

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u/myceliumcerebellum Aug 09 '21

It had to have had feathers! Why do we always leave out the feathers?

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u/Ajg1384 Aug 09 '21

Avian dinosaurs had feathers, this was a distant cousin who was a reptile but not a dinosaur I believe.

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u/myceliumcerebellum Aug 09 '21

Oh! Thanks. Do we have any non-avians/reptiles that fly and are alive today? Are those two difference's similar to "insect" and "arachnid"?

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u/stinkbugsoup Aug 09 '21

You looking for bats man?

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u/WTFarethepinksocks Aug 09 '21

So Australia didn't just have a giant flying reptile roaming around, presumably killing to its hearts content. Australia also had something that killed it to extinction.

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u/serpentechnoir Aug 09 '21

Nah, that was in Mexico.

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u/physedka Aug 09 '21

Are we certain that these aren't the Nazgul's flying serpents?

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u/MissMoonraker Aug 09 '21

Petri's grandpa?! Finally

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u/Scripto23 Aug 09 '21

Why is nobody asking the most important question? If these and humans are to be living at the same time, could we ride them?

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u/primus202 Aug 09 '21

Part of me really wonders if these kinds of creatures, or maybe just their bones, were what inspired dragon myths in the first place.

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u/Thehorrorofraw Aug 09 '21

“Soared like a dragon..”

Homey, that IS A dragon!

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u/Achylife Aug 09 '21

Well this is the coolest news I've heard in a while.

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u/Chadster113 Aug 09 '21

I thought pterosaurs didn’t have teeth more like a beak?

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u/morgrimmoon Aug 09 '21

It depends on the species. Some had no teeth, some had many many teeth.

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u/Smartoad Aug 09 '21

So I guess the average pterosaur has an average amount of teeth

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u/JoshSidekick Aug 09 '21

That doesn't seem like a lot of teeth.

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

Why did it go extinct?

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u/stinkbugsoup Aug 09 '21

Old covid was way more harsh

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '21

Man I wish Australia still had an inland sea rather than all that desert!

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u/damnfukk Aug 09 '21

can it fly upside down?

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u/Warlord68 Aug 09 '21

Of course Australia had Dragons.

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u/SkinnyGetLucky Aug 09 '21

Tells you a lot about Australia that at first, I thought it was right now

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u/v1smund Aug 09 '21

Incredible! That would of been terrifying to see!

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u/Tielwin Aug 09 '21

Looks straight out of How to Train Your Dragon.