Overview
- An international team led by Curtin University published in iScience on Friday a study of a 113-million-year-old pterosaur wing phalanx from northeastern Brazil that is preserved in three dimensions.
- Analyses recovered organic molecules from the bone, including steroid traces not previously reported from pterosaurs, and carbon isotopes that point to a diet of marine prey such as fish or squid.
- The authors argue preservation resulted from a specialised ancient microbiome, including sulfur-oxidising bacteria, that produced local redox shifts and triggered rapid multi-staged mineralisation around the bone.
- Researchers used high-resolution CT imaging and targeted geochemical analyses at Curtin’s John de Laeter Centre and WA-OIGC to map mineral layers and identify molecular biomarkers.
- The team proposes this microbially driven oxidative process as a new global Lagerstätten mechanism and says the finding should prompt re-examination of other fossil sites for preserved molecules and revised paleoecological interpretations.