For two tiny flying reptiles, death came suddenly and violently 150 million years ago.
Now, thanks to remarkable fossils discovered in southern Germany, paleontologists have pieced together their final moments, revealing not only how they died but also why so many baby pterosaurs dominate the fossil record of this region.
The fossils belong to hatchling Pterodactylus, a genus of pterosaurs that soared through the skies during the age of dinosaurs.
Each baby had a wingspan of less than 20 centimeters—no larger than a modern sparrow.
They were found in the world-famous Solnhofen Limestones, a series of lagoon deposits celebrated for their exceptionally preserved fossils, including the first known Archaeopteryx.
What makes these discoveries stand out is not just their tiny size but their tragic story. Both individuals, nicknamed Lucky and Lucky II by researchers from the University of Leicester, were preserved with broken wings.
Close inspection revealed a clean, slanted fracture in the humerus—the main upper wing bone. One had a broken left wing, the other a broken right. The breaks were so similar that scientists believe they were caused by violent gusts of wind during a powerful tropical storm.
With their fragile wings damaged, the hatchlings would have been helpless in the air. Swept into the storm-tossed lagoon, they drowned in the waves.
Their small bodies sank quickly into the muddy bottom, where fine sediments buried them almost instantly. This rapid burial prevented scavengers and decay from destroying their delicate skeletons. Millions of years later, their remains still look almost exactly as they did at the time of death.
The irony is that these storms, which ended their lives, also created the perfect conditions for their fossils to survive.
Normally, pterosaurs are rare in the fossil record because their hollow, paper-thin bones were easily crushed or destroyed before they could be preserved. Larger adults, with stronger bodies, may have survived storms only to drift and decay on the water’s surface, leaving behind little more than scattered fragments.
But young hatchlings, light and fragile, were especially vulnerable to the winds. When the storms struck, they were often swept up, drowned, and buried whole.
This explains why the Solnhofen Limestones, despite yielding hundreds of pterosaur fossils, are dominated by small, very young individuals rather than adults.
For centuries, scientists thought the region was home mainly to tiny pterosaurs. In fact, the fossil record is biased. These juveniles likely lived on nearby islands, only to be caught in storms that carried them into the lagoon.
Lead author Rab Smyth described the discovery as a turning point: “Finding one hatchling with a broken wing might have been a fluke. But when we found a second with the same injury, it became clear we were looking at evidence of how these animals were dying.”
His colleague Dr. David Unwin recalled the moment Lucky II was illuminated under ultraviolet light: “It literally leapt out of the rock at us—and our hearts stopped.”
The Luckies, as the two hatchlings are now fondly known, provide a rare glimpse into the hazards of ancient life and the role of catastrophic events in shaping what we see in the fossil record today.
Their story shows that the world of the Mesozoic was not just one of towering dinosaurs and giant predators, but also of fragile creatures whose lives—and deaths—were bound to the forces of nature.
Source: University of Leicester.
