The Jurassic pterosaur Kunpengopterus antipollicatus resisted thumbs up and probably lived a tree-dwelling existence.
Chuang Zhao
People tend to think of our thumbs as a sign of sophistication. We need to make room for a newly discovered species of flying reptile, which according to scientists is the oldest true opposite thumb ever found. The researchers nicknamed it ‘Monkeydactyl’.
The pterosaur species Kunpengopterus antipollicatus lived in China during the Jurassic era. It was quite small, with a wingspan of about 85 centimeters. What makes it stand out from other pterosaurs is the opposite thumb seen in the fossils.
An international team of researchers on Monday published an article on K. antipollicatus in the journal Current Biology highlighting the thumb (called ‘pollex’) and the arboreal nature of the pterosaur, which would have lived in a forest environment.
“This is an interesting discovery,” co-author Fion Waisum Ma said in a statement from the University of Birmingham. “It provides the earliest evidence of a true opposite thumb, and it comes from a pterosaur, which was not known to have an opposite thumb.”
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The researchers suspect the thumb was an adaptation to live in trees. An illustration of what the animals could look like from it shows how the pterosaurs grabbed onto a tree.
Today we see an opposite pollex on ourselves and other primates, but it is good to remember that we are not the only animals that have developed clever thumbs.