Jurassic Secrets: New Fossil Discoveries and Reptile Evolution

Unveiled from the limestone of Bavaria, Skiphosoura is the "Rosetta Stone" of pterosaur evolution. It is the perfect transitional fossil. Physically, it is a mash-up of the old and the new: it possesses the head and neck of the later giants but retains the longer tail and wrist structure of its ancestors. This creature proves that pterosaurs didn't just "jump" to giant sizes; they evolved through a modular process, changing their heads and necks for better feeding before their bodies grew to gargantuan proportions.

Meanwhile, on the windswept Isle of Skye in Scotland, another flyer emerged from the rock: Ceoptera evansae . Dating back to the Middle Jurassic—a notoriously empty chapter in the fossil record—Ceoptera belongs to the Darwinoptera clade. Its discovery pushes the origin of these advanced pterosaurs back by millions of years, proving that the skies were full of diverse, specialized flyers much earlier than previously thought. It suggests that while dinosaurs were conquering the land, a rapid and fierce evolutionary arms race was already taking place above their heads.

While pterosaurs were refining flight, the Jurassic oceans were a cauldron of reptilian experimentation. In September 2025, researchers stunned the scientific community with the description of Eurhinosaurus mistelgauensis , a marine reptile that looked like a nightmare version of a modern swordfish.

Found in the Mistelgau clay pit in Germany, this ichthyosaur had an upper jaw that was drastically longer than its lower jaw, creating a terrifying, tooth-lined sword. Unlike its dolphin-like cousins that are famous for their speed, Eurhinosaurus likely used this weapon to slash at shoals of fish or dig for prey on the seafloor. What makes this find so significant is its age—it lived 182 million years ago (Early Jurassic), showing that ichthyosaurs evolved extreme, specialized tool-kits remarkably early in their reign.

But not all "new" discoveries come from fresh digs. In August 2025, a dusty fossil sitting in a museum for 47 years was re-examined and identified as a completely new species of plesiosaur: Plesionectes longicollum . This long-necked hunter reveals that the Early Jurassic seas were not dominated by just one or two types of marine reptiles, but were teeming with a complex hierarchy of predators, each adapted to a specific niche. It serves as a reminder that our museums are still full of secrets waiting to be unlocked by modern eyes.

Perhaps the most scientifically "disruptive" discovery of late 2025 didn't come from a giant dinosaur, but from a creature barely the length of your forearm. On the Isle of Skye, scientists identified Breugnathair elgolensis , dubbed the "False Snake of Elgol."

For years, we’ve debated how snakes evolved. Did they lose their legs in the ocean? Or in burrows? Breugnathair throws a wrench in the works. Living 167 million years ago, this creature had the body and fully formed limbs of a lizard, but its mouth was a dead ringer for a modern python, complete with backward-curving teeth designed to hook and hold struggling prey.

Breugnathair suggests that the "snake toolkit"—the specialized jaws for swallowing large prey—evolved before the animals lost their legs. It wasn't a slithering body that made a snake a snake; it was the terrifying ability to eat things bigger than its own head. This "lizard" was likely a ground-level terror for the smaller creatures of the Jurassic undergrowth, representing a ghost lineage that hints at how modern squamates (lizards and snakes) rose to power.

We cannot talk about the Jurassic without the sauropods. In late 2025, the famous Morrison Formation in the USA—the graveyard that gave us Brontosaurus and Diplodocus—yielded yet another surprise.

A skull that had been mislabeled as Diplodocus for over a century was analyzed with high-resolution CT scanning and realized to be a distinct species: Athenar bermani . This wasn't just a case of splitting hairs; Athenar had a braincase and sensory anatomy different from its cousins, suggesting it processed its environment differently. It implies that the Late Jurassic ecosystem was even more crowded than we thought, with multiple species of 50-ton titans coexisting by exploiting slightly different food sources or behaviors—much like different species of antelope on the Serengeti today.

Finally, a fascinating study published in late 2025 turned our attention to Anchiornis huxleyi , a small, bird-like dinosaur from Late Jurassic China. We’ve known Anchiornis had feathers, but could it fly?