Meet the monkeydactyl
Scientists have revealed a unique new species of pterosaur (a type of flying reptile that lived at the time of the dinosaurs), which they have nicknamed the “monkeydactyl”. What makes the find unusual is that it is the oldest-known creature to have had opposable thumbs, meaning that one of its claws could bend to touch the fingers of the same hand. Opposable thumbs make it easy to pick up and hold objects, and their development was an important stage in the evolution of primates (humans and their relatives, such as apes, lemurs and monkeys).
Officially called Kunpengopterus antipollicatus, the monkeydactyl lived in what is now China during the Jurassic period (between 200 and 145 million years ago). Its fossils were unearthed in Liaoning, China, in September 2019. The research team used CT scans (a sort of 3D X-ray) to create a digital model of the pterosaur, which revealed that it had a wingspan of about 85 centimetres and opposable thumbs on each hand. “This is an interesting discovery,” says Fion Waisum Ma, a team member from the University of Birmingham. “It provides the earliest evidence of a true opposed thumb, and it isfromapterosaur – which wasn’t known for having an opposed thumb.”
It’s thought that the monkeydactyl developed its crafty thumbs as an adaptation to living in trees. Another team member, Rodrigo Pêgas from the Federal University of ABC in Brazil, says, “Almost all of the modern animals that have opposable thumbs use them to climb trees.” As well as this, however, the researchers think the monkeydactyl could also have used its thumbs for grasping prey.