….With a wingspan of about 2.5 metres or larger – around the size of the largest flying birds today, such as the wandering albatross – the creature sheds new light on the evolution of pterosaurs, given they were not thought to have reached such a size until about 25m years later.

“When this thing was living about 170m years ago, it was the largest animal that had ever flown, at least that we know of,” said Prof Steve Brusatte, a co-author of the research from the University of Edinburgh.

“We’ve really dragged back in time the evolution of large pterosaurs,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/feb/22/remains-of-worlds-largest-jurassic-pterosaur-recovered-in-scotland

A skeleton from the Middle Jurassic of Scotland illuminates an earlier origin of large pterosaurs

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)00135-X

And because this is another interesting paleontological thing:

“Abdominal contents reveal Cretaceous crocodyliforms ate dinosaurs.”

Gondwana Research
Volume 106, June 2022, Pages 281-302

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1342937×22000338?via%3Dihub

Bubblecar said:

….With a wingspan of about 2.5 metres or larger – around the size of the largest flying birds today, such as the wandering albatross – the creature sheds new light on the evolution of pterosaurs, given they were not thought to have reached such a size until about 25m years later.

“When this thing was living about 170m years ago, it was the largest animal that had ever flown, at least that we know of,” said Prof Steve Brusatte, a co-author of the research from the University of Edinburgh.

“We’ve really dragged back in time the evolution of large pterosaurs,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/feb/22/remains-of-worlds-largest-jurassic-pterosaur-recovered-in-scotland

A skeleton from the Middle Jurassic of Scotland illuminates an earlier origin of large pterosaurs

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)00135-X

Nice visual of the running man for scale

> 170m years ago … about the size of a wandering albatross … they were not thought to have reached such a size until about 25m years later.

Amazing what can happen in just 25 million years.