Palaeontologist Adele Pentland led the research team. She says the discovery is a major step forward for Palaeontology.
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00:00It was discovered by Kevin Peterson.
00:04He happened to be monitoring another fossil and was retrieving tools from his car when
00:09he spotted bone exposed at the surface and immediately identified it as a pterosaur.
00:16When I started my PhD, fewer than 20 pterosaur bones had been described from Australia, and
00:21they were all isolated one-off elements, which made studying them very difficult.
00:27This is more than twice as complete as the only other partial skeleton that's been reported
00:32from Australia, so when we have so many bones, we can actually learn a lot about the life
00:37of this individual.
00:38For example, this was a fully grown adult, and it had a wingspan of 4.6 meters.
00:44Pterosaurs are an extinct group of flying reptiles that lived during the age of dinosaurs.
00:49There's nothing like them today, but it gives me immense pride to know that this specimen
00:56is safe and it's also on display.
00:58It's currently on display at Cronosaurus Corner in Richmond, Queensland.