Creationism in Crisis - New Pterosaur Species Found in Sub-Saharan Africa

New pterosaur species found in sub-Saharan Africa - SMU

SMU paleontologists helped find a new species of pterosaurs in Angola, where fossils of other large marine animals have been found. E. otyikokolo can be seen flying above the ocean in the ancient picture.

Artwork by Karen Carr Studio.

It must be difficult trying to maintain the necessary ignorance of the facts to be a Creationist who believes Earth was created as is just a few thousand years ago - rather like an idiot standing with his eyes shut, hoping if he can't see it, the onrushing avalanche won't affect him.

So, it's with great pleasure that I add another large boulder to that onrushing avalanche, in the form of news of a new species of pterosaur that lived on the coast of what is now Angola in West Africa, about 71.5 million years ago. It had a wing-span of almost 16 feet (4.8 metres).

This new discovery gives us a much better understanding of the ecological role of the creatures that were flying above the waves of Bentiaba, on the west coast of Africa, approximately 71.5 million years ago.

Michael J. Polcyn, co-author Research associate
Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA

The discovery was made by an international team which included two vertebrate palaeontologists from the Southern Methodist University (SMU), Michael J. Polcyn, and Professor Louis L. Jacobs. The species is new to science and has been given the name Epapatelo otyikokolo, "wing lizard" in the Nhaneca dialect spoken in the area. It was found in the same formation in which fossils of large marine animals have been found.

They likely spent time flying above open-water environments and diving to feed, like gannets and brown pelicans do today. Epapatelo otyikokolo was not a small animal, and its wingspan was approximately 4.8 m, or nearly 16 feet.

Professor Louis L. Jacobs Professor emeritus of earth sciences
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA

The pterosaur probably caught fish, diving into the sea in the same way that modern gannets do. Later fossil discoveries suggest some members of the species may have been even larger with a wing-span of nearly 35 feet.

The lead author of the study was Alexandra E. Fernandes, of Museu da Lourinhã, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa and The Bavarian State Collection for Paleontology and Geology. Other co-authors include Octávio Mateus of Universidade NOVA de Lisboa and Museu da Lourinhã; Brian Andres of the University of Sheffield; Anne S. Schulp of the Naturalis Biodiversity Center and Utrecht University in the Netherlands; and Antonio Olímpio Gonçalves of the Universidade Agostinho Neto in Angola.

Figure 1.
Location of the commune of Bentiaba with a geological map of Angola. Adapted from Strganac et al. 2014 [26] and Mateus et al. 2019 [3], according to the U. S. Geological Survey 2002 (scale: 1:30,000,000) [27].

Fernandes, Alexandra E.; Mateus, Octávio; Andres, Brian, et.al (2022)

The team's findings are published, open access, in the journal Diversity:

Abstract

Here, we describe the first pterosaur remains from Angola, an assemblage of fourteen bones from the Lower Maastrichtian marine deposits of Bentiaba, Namibe Province. One new species is introduced, Epapatelo otyikokolo, gen. et sp. nov., which comprises an articulated partial left humerus and ulna as well as an articulated left ulna and radius (from a second individual). Phylogenetic analysis confirms a non-nyctosaurid pteranodontian attribution for this new taxon and supports a new apomorphy-based clade, Aponyctosauria, which is here defined. Late Cretaceous pteranodontians are rare in Sub-Saharan Africa and throughout the Southern Hemisphere. Preliminary histological analysis also reveals a likely sub-adult age for one of the specimens. This fossil assemblage provides a first glimpse of Angolan pterosaur paleobiodiversity providing further insight into the Gondwanan ecosystems of the Upper Cretaceous.

Fernandes, Alexandra E.; Mateus, Octávio; Andres, Brian; Polcyn, Michael J.; Schulp, Anne S.; Gonçalves, António O.; Jacobs, Louis L. (2022)
Pterosaurs from the Late Cretaceous of Angola
Diversity; 14(9), 741, DOI: 10.3390/d14090741

Copyright: © 2022 The authors. Published by MDPI (Basel, Switzerland).
Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

71.5 million years is a lot longer than the few thousand years that Bible-literalist Creationists believe Earth has been around, so it will take a creative genius to dream up a rationalization for continuing to believe something for which not only is there no evidence but what evidence there is utterly refutes.

Normally, these intellectual gymnastics include, attacking the scientists and accusing them of forging the evidence or falsifying their results, blaming Satan or lying about the accuracy of the dating techniques used. What a Creationist will never do is accept the evidence and wonder if they could be wrong.

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Thank you for sharing!

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