But once again, it’s Chinese fossils to the rescue, as a new species – another transitional form, Creationists! – has been discovered. As published this week by the Royal Society, Darwinopterus modularis (“Darwin-wing”…er…”modular”) is the kind of transition that makes things obvious – it has all the skull and neck characteristics of a pterodactyloid, but the rest of its body is old-school, long-tailed pterosaur. It’s as though a mid-Jurassic pterosaur had a new haircut and the new ‘do was such a big hit that it eventually changed it’s whole wardrobe to match…

The exciting thing is that this doesn’t just help explain how one form changed into another, but is also evidence of modular evolution. Normally we think of evolution in terms of an individual trait changing over generations – a tail getting longer, teeth getting sharper, colouration getting brighter. In modular evolution, though, sets of complementary features evolve together at the same time – in this case, D. modularis doesn’t just have a head closer to that of a pterodactyl; it’s evolved all the numerous head and neck features of pterodactyls, while the rest of its body retains the characteristics of an earlier pterosaur. It hasn’t just had a haircut, it’s gone in for some piercings and facial tatts as well, but it’s still wearing the stodgy old business suit.

This story is also interesting in the way that some news outlets have done better with it than others. The Independent did quite well, but fell into a common misconception: “Carbon dating has shown that the fossils fall in the middle of the age range from 220 million to 65 million years ago”. The erroneous word here is “Carbon”; Carbon dating is useless for anything more than around 60,000 years old, and palaeontologists – certainly those working with dinosaurs – use other methods to determine the age of their finds. To the author and paper’s credit, this little error and several others have now been cleaned up; to even greater credit, they added a comment in the story to let readers know! (Probably because bloggers with quicker trigger fingers than mine had already been pointing to it…)

On the other hand, The Australian were much worse; they ran with a headline about “Flying Dinosaurs” – pterosaurs are flying reptiles, not dinosaurs – but then go one better by reporting that the fossil was “baptised” with its scientific name. Baptised? Really? I mean, christened, sure; that has currency as a synonym for “named”. But “baptised”? I expected the article to conclude with a social item inviting the reader to Darwinopterus‘ confirmation… The article lists Agence France-Presse as the source, but somehow I’m not sure this translation is entirely their fault…

Presumably the Pterodactyl was part of the “Jurassic” maze, but mysteries still remain. Why is it still there, all alone, in the field? Why isn’t it signposted? And what happened to the rest of the dinosaurs – and the maze itself?

If you want to find the Big Pterodactyl for yourself, modern technology makes it easy. The recently launched Google Street View includes pictures of the Newell highway, so you can see the Pterodactyl and find it on the map.

If you’ve found any odd science-related bits and pieces on your travels around Australia, let me know!

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There was no sign proclaiming Dubbo to be the home of “the Big Pterodactyl” (which would no doubt be its name if it had one, though like most popular representations of pterosaurs, this one has the classic Pteranadon head crest), nor were there any other nearby monsters. There was just this guy, who more resembles Rodan (the Godzilla monster, not the much smaller Port Adelaide footballer) than any actual prehistoric flying reptile.

There’s something very charming about this statue – it’s very old school, almost Crystal Palace-like in its chunky, heavy design – but at the same time it seems somehow…sinister. So far I’ve not been able to find any information about its origins or fate. Was there once a dinosaur park in Dubbo? Was there a tourist attraction here? Perhaps its the last remnants of some obscure cult, and obscene sacrifices were made in its name?

This might not be science, but there are few things the Man in the Lab Coat enjoys more than finding answers. I’ll let you know how I get on!