Brazilian, Chinese scientists unveil newpterosaurspecies shanghaisun.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from shanghaisun.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
After years of negotiations in almost three decades since it was smuggled from Brazil to Germany, the fossil of the Ubirajara jubatus was returned to Brazil. The specimen of a dinosaur ancestor of birds, which lived some 110 million years ago, is the first of its kind found in Latin America and the oldest in the Araripe basin, on the border between the states of Ceara, Piaui, and Pernambuco, in the Northeast. Irregularly removed from Brazil in the 1990s, the fossil was housed in the State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe, Germany, and returned to its origin on June 4. The chicken-sized, feather-covered fossil lies on two plates, positive and negative, one plate measuring 47 cm by 46 cm x 4 cm, weighing about 11.5 kg. The second plate measures 47 cm x 46 cm x 3 cm and weighs approximately 8 kg. To celebrate the repatriation of the fossil, Brazil's Ministry of Science and Technology, the government of Ceara, the Regional University of Cariri and representatives from the German gov