Mark Witton
Mark Brown

Mark Brown

News contributor,

An ancient dinosaur fossil found in China has allowed palaeontologists to, for the first time, assign gender to the flying pterosaur reptiles of the Mesozoic Era, between 220 and 65 million years ago.

Dinosaur experts have long been baffled as to why some pterosaurs had soaring great crests on their head, while others had none. Some researchers believed that the crests were specific to one gender, while others assumed the crested reptiles were a different species altogether. But with no direct evidence, the ideas remained speculative.

Until now, as researchers from the University of Leicester have found a fossil in China that proves one of those theses right. A fossilized individual of Darwinopterus, nicknamed "Mrs T", was found beautifully preserved with an egg, indicating that the flying reptile was female. As the dinosaur didn't sport a head crest, the palaeontologist team claim that the ostentatious headwear is exclusive to males.

Along with her lack of crest, she also has much wider hips than male pterosaurs, to accommodate the passage of eggs.

"This type of discovery, in which gender can be determined with certainty, is extremely rare in the fossil record, and the first to be reported for pterosaurs," said David Unwin, a palaeobiologist at the University of Leicester.

The fossil was found in the Liaoning Province in northeast China, and showed that Mrs T was about to lay her egg, when she broke her left forearm and was killed in a traumatic accident. It's thought that a strong storm or a volcanic eruption might have caused her untimely demise.

But why would these dinosaurs have these magnificent crests, which can sometimes reach five times the height of the skull? The team assumes they were used to intimidate rival males, or attract mates.

"Now, we can exploit our knowledge of pterosaur gender to research entirely new areas such as population structure and behaviour," said Unwin. "We can also play matchmaker for pterosaurs bringing back together long separated males and females in the single species to which they both belong".

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