Smith believes that so few adults appear in this region in this region, not only because they are more likely to survive, but also because those that could not be buried so quickly. Cars will swim on the water anywhere from days to weeks. When they decomposed, parts fall to the bottom of the lagoon. The minors were small enough so that they could be quickly covered and quickly burials with the deposits that retained them.
The cause of death
Fractures of the humerus found in Lucky I and Lucky II were especially significant, because injuries of the front front are the most common among the existing flying vertebrates. The company's shoulder bone attaches the wing to the body and has the greatest flight voltage, which makes it more prone to injury. Most of the shoulder bone fractures occur in flight, and not the result of a sudden effect with wood or rock. And these fractures were the only trauma of the skeleton observed in any of the juvenile samples of a pterosaurus from the sunhofen.
The evidence indicating the injuries of two young pterosaurs occurred to death, include the movement of the bones when they were still in flight (something recognizable by the results of death from the sources of existing birds and bats) and the smooth edges of the gap that happens in life, in contrast to the jagged ribs after the break. There were also no visible signs of healing.
Storms disproportionately affected flying creatures in the sunhofen, which were often removed by intense winds. Many of the petrified vertebrates of the sunhofen were pterosaurs and other winged species, such as a bird ancestor ArachaeoptyxFlying invertebrates were also doomed.
Even sea invertebrates and fish threatened with storm conditions that beat the lagons and led to deep waters with higher salt levels and low oxygen to the surface. Everything that plunged into the bottom was exclusively preserved from the same conditions that were too sharp for the garbage men and suspended the decomposition. The dirt raised by storms also helped with the fossil process, quickly covering these organisms and providing further protection against elements.
“The same storm events responsible for the burial of these people also transferred pterosaurs to lagunal pools and were probably the main reason for their injury and death,” Smith concluded.
Although Lucky I and Lucky II were clearly unlucky, the exquisite preservation of their skeletons, which shows how they died, finally allowed researchers to solve a case that was more than a hundred thousand years old.
Current biology, 2025. DOI: 10.1016/J.cub.2025.08.006
