Rio, 19 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - Brazil's National Museum, located in Rio de Janeiro, made yesterday a public presentation of the skeleton and a reconstructed head of a talasodromius, a kind of pterosauro whch inhabited Brazil some 110 million years ago ["pterosauros" is an order of extinct flying reptiles; the word, from Greek, means "winged lizard"]. The Brazilian fossil was found in a region known as Chapada do Araripe, in a common border area of the states of Pernambuco, Ceará and Piauí, in 1983. The talasodromius is characterized by a large bony crest on its head which contains blood vessels so that, believe researchers, the warm-blooded animal could cool its brain.

An article on the fossil by paleonotologists Diógenes de Almeida Campos and Alexander Kellnner will be published in "Science." (AB)