Paleontologists say fossils of a flying reptile unearthed in China show skull features that would have made it look like the flying creatures from the massively popular film "Avatar."
In fact, researchers say, it looks so much like its movie counterparts, known in the film as "ikran," that they decided to name the new pterosaur species Ikrandraco avatar. Draco is Latin for "dragon."
Ikrandraco sported a distinctive chin crest like that possessed by the brightly colored movie beasts in the box office hit.
"Many pterosaurs bear crests on their skull, some quite large and bizarre," says senior study author Alexander Kellner of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, but he explains Ikrandraco is the first pterosaur found to have a crest positioned on the lower jaw.
Two partial skeleton of Ikrandraco, dating to the Early Cretaceous Period around 120 millions years ago, were unearthed in China's northeastern Liaoning province, the researchers report in the journal Scientific Reports.
The skull shape, in addition to giving the creature its "Avatar" look, may have supported a throat pouch that allowed the flying reptile to scoop up fish as it flew low over water, in the manner of a modern pelican, they say.
"The presence of throat sacs in pterosaurs has been proposed several times before, based primarily on soft tissue specimens" found with other pterosaur remains, the researchers note.
The features of the Ikrandraco skull have "no parallel among the known pterosaur species and suggests a specialized foraging habit of this new flying reptile," says vertebrate paleontologist Xiaoling Wang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Size is one area where the new species doesn't measure up to the movie version, since its maximum wingspan would have been less than 5 feet, the researchers point out.
Still, Wang says, it was likely an accomplished flier given the fossil evidence of long, thin wings and well-developed flight muscles.
"It is hard to say if all pterosaurs are good fliers, but this new pterosaur must be a good flier," he suggests.
It would have been a different matter on land, he says, and they were likely somewhat awkward when walking on the ground, again similar to modern pelicans.
As highly specialized creatures, while their forelimbs used for flying would have been strong and muscular, their hind limbs on which they would have walked were weak, he explains.
"Hence, when they were on the ground, they must [have been] ungainly," Wang says.
