Researchers from Mansoura University identified on Tuesday, 30 June, what is being described as Egypt’s first confirmed record of pterosaurs, flying reptiles that dominated the skies 145 million years long before the appearance of birds.
The discovery, led by the Mansoura Vertebrate Palaeontology Centre (Sallam Lab), was made in collaboration with Egypt’s Ministry of Environment, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in the United States.
The fossil consists of a rare, diagnostic piece of a pterosaur wing: the first bone element associated with the extended fourth finger, recovered from rocks of the Bahariya Formation in the Western Desert near the Bahariya Oasis.
Found within the deposits of the ancient marine Bahariya environment, the specimen offers the clearest direct evidence to date that pterosaurs lived and flew in what is now northern Egypt during the Late Cretaceous, approximately 95 million years ago.
Based on anatomical measurements, the researchers estimate the pterosaur represented by the fossil to have been of a medium size, with an estimated wingspan of roughly four metres.
Also, the study explains that pterosaur bones were generally thin-walled and lightweight, adaptates for flight, which made them less likely to fossilize than the sturdier bones of many other groups.
This factor explains why the fossil record of pterosaurs across parts of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula remains limited and fragmented, making the Egyptian evidence especially valuable.
In describing the significance of the find, the research team emphasized both its scientific and personal importance.
Lead author Bilal Salem, a doctoral researcher at Ohio University and a member of the Sallam Lab research group, explained that the Bahariya Oasis was already known for the giant predators that dominated the land and waterways, but that the new fossil adds something entirely new by providing clear evidence of animals that ruled the skies.
The results were published on, 30 June 2026, in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, marking an important step forward for vertebrate palaeontology in Egypt and offering fresh insight into a world where pterosaurs, among the first vertebrates to evolve powered flight, shared the landscape with dinosaurs for more than 150 million years, before ultimately disappearing at the end of the Cretaceous.
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