Several million years ago, at a time when dinosaurs walked the earth, a flying reptile – a pterosaur – came in for a landing. As it approached, it used its powerful wings to slow itself down and hit the ground feet first. It took a short hopping step before landing a second time. On solid ground, it leant forward, put its arms down and walked away on all fours.
The landing made quite an impression on the underlying limestone mud and in the following millennia, the creature’s tracks became fossilised. Now, they have been unearthed by Jean-Michel Mazin from the University of Lyon at a site near Crayssac in southwestern France.
The area is home to at least 30 sets of pterosaur tracks, which have earned it the nickname of Pterosaur Beach. Some of these tracks have confirmed that some pterosaurs walked on four legs while land-bound, in the manner of many modern bats. But one bizarre set stood out to Mazin – they simply didn’t fit the typical walking gait of the French pterosaurs. The most plausible explanation is that they preserved a landing, and they’re the first set of fossils that have done so.
It’s clear that the pair of prints labelled LP0 and RP0 were the first in the series. There were no other tracks for two metres behind or to the side of them, even though the ground is continuous. The tracks’ maker must have been airborne before creating them. The tracks preserve four pairs of steps before a fault in the ground makes it impossible to work out where the animal went next.
The first set of footprints has no corresponding handprints, the heel portion isn’t isn’t deeper or longer than usual, and there aren’t any piles of sediment around them. The pterosaur clearly landed feet-first, but it did so gently rather than braking heavily into the ground. Nonetheless, it wasn’t a perfect landing. The slight impressions left by its claws and the short distance before the next set of footprints suggest that the animal stuttered slightly, hopping forward before coming in to land.
The claw impressions also rule out the possibility that the pterosaur was walking backwards before taking off (although tracks of a take-off would be equally unique and exciting). Indeed, later prints show that the animal placed its hand down and started walking away, turning left before the tracks were interrupted. The short distance between the hand- and footprints suggest that it held its trunk more vertically than the horizontal postures that pterosaurs are normally given.
The tracks suggest that pterosaurs can land in the style of most modern birds, by stalling their forward momentum with their wings, either by gliding and changing the angle of their wings, or by flapping to a halt. Both options suggest that the animals were sophisticated and powerful fliers.
Reference: Proc Roy Soc B doi:10.1098/rspb.2009.1161 Can’t find the paper? Be patient – most journals have a few hours’ delay between the lifting of press embargoes and the publication of papers. For PNAS, this can be up to a week.
More palaeontology:
- Microraptor – the dinosaur that flew like a biplane
- Beipaiosaurus was covered in the simplest known feathers
- Old wounds show that Triceratops used its horns for combat
- Tianyulong – a fuzzy dinosaur that makes the origin of feathers fuzzier
August 19th, 2009 at 7:17 am
By day she stalks her peaceful domain, nodding occasionally to sample its faunal abundance. By night she patrols her borders, wheeling silently in moonlit skies, a celestial marauder plunging to snatch a mega-predator’s offspring from its very nest, only to explode again skyward. Who can stop her? Who can stir from slumber in time to mark her ascent? Truly she is terror from the skies, a Maastrichtian ninja.
August 19th, 2009 at 7:22 am
Wow, that’s incredible!
I’m assuming this is the first confirmed pterosaur landing tracks ever discovered?
Awesome.
August 19th, 2009 at 8:30 am
That’s exceptionally cool. Thanks.
August 19th, 2009 at 8:37 am
I can’t understand how big these Pterosaurs are.
August 19th, 2009 at 8:39 am
Great coverage, much more in depth than the New Scientist article.
August 19th, 2009 at 8:42 am
An ordinary moment in time made wicked-awesome by its capture.
August 19th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Are the pterosaurs in that artist’s rendition wearing berets?
August 19th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Yes. They are pterroirsaurs.
August 19th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Pterroirsaurs! Hot damn! I love me a good pun!
August 19th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Echoing Livio @4, there’s a scale bar in the photo, but it isn’t clear how big it is. Are the smaller segments 1 cm (making the pes about 6 cm) or something less intuitive?
August 19th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
After reading the paper (thanks again, Ed!), I gotta say I’m more interested in their illustrated walk cycle than the landing itself. I fully intend to create a FlipNote animation based on that sequence, then upload it and post it on my blorgh.
August 20th, 2009 at 3:31 am
chris, livio: The scale bar in the outline tracing is 0.5m. These tracks were made by very big feet!
August 23rd, 2009 at 12:54 pm
The paper itself is now available, and is free!
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2009/08/14/rspb.2009.1161
Half a meter?! I think somebody made a typo in there somewhere…
The caption for the image says: “Field scale, 50 cm. Scale bar, 5 cm.” The field scale is the one in the picture on the left (and is indeed half a meter); the scale bar in the tracing is only 5cm.