One hundred and fifty million years ago, the Solnhofen Limestones of Germany were covered in small islands and warm saltwater lagoons. Coral reefs flourished with crinoids, sponges, jellyfish, and crustaceans ; Dragonflies buzzed above the water as small reptiles sunned themselves at the water’s edge. Pterosaurs and Archaeopteryx took to the skies, but there was trouble in this Jurassic paradise: Tropical storms would turn it into a pterosaur graveyard.

What paleontologist Rab Smyth found in this graveyard finally revealed why so many fledgling pterosaurs had succumbed to the storm. Smyth, a researcher at the Center for Paleobiology and Biosphere Evolution at the University of Leicester, unearthed two Pterodactylus antiquus hatchlings, and their bones showed exactly how th

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