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A 100-million-year-old fossil that was confiscated by Brazilian police during a raid in S膩o Paolo has been identified as one of the strangest pterosaurs ever to have lived, with a 50-centimetre-tall head crest that would have made it difficult for the winged reptile to fly.

Pterosaurs, distant relatives of the dinosaurs, were a very successful and diverse group. The , while the largest had wingspans of 10 metres. The so-called tapejarid pterosaurs were neither the largest nor the smallest of the pterosaurs, but they did have one astonishing feature: a huge head crest.

However, studying the tapejarids hasn鈥檛 been easy because researchers have found fossils of only a few parts of the head and body.

The newly described fossil changes this. It belongs to a tapejarid called Tupandactylus navigans and it reveals a long-necked pterosaur with what Victor Beccari at Nova University of Lisbon, Portugal, calls a 鈥渕esmerising鈥� head crest still detectable in the stone.

鈥淧terosaurs were already mind-blowing before, but this new specimen, with its huge, awkward crest and long neck, is mind-boggling because 鈥� sort of like [flashy] peacock tails 鈥� they would have made him an attractive mate, but an easy target for predators and a poor flyer,鈥� says Beccari.

The fossil was almost lost to science. It was one of several specimens recovered during a police raid in 2013 designed to partially break up Brazil鈥檚 underground fossil trade.

Poachers had apparently sawn the slab into six pieces trying to make it smaller and easier to stash away from police. Confiscated at Santos Harbour and reassembled, the nearly 2-metre-high slab underwent photographic analysis and CT scanning from its conservation site at the University of Sao Paolo.

The pterosaur鈥檚 bones and a coloured imprint of its head crest 鈥� which was made from soft tissue 鈥� were preserved in 3D. The animal probably fell into oxygen-starved layers of silt at the bottom of a lake, where its body would have been better protected from biological decay, leading to such an exceptional state of preservation, says Beccari.

础濒颈惫别,听T. navigans聽had a wingspan of 2.7 metres. On the ground it would have stood about a metre high, walking on all fours with its wings folded out of the way. The neck was surprisingly long 鈥� about 30 centimetres. Researchers had previously assumed the pterosaur would have had a short neck with locking tendons to help it carry its un-aerodynamic top crest, he says.

The crest, meanwhile, accounted for almost half T. navigans鈥榮 total height. This suggests it was too top-heavy for long flights, says Beccari.

鈥淟ike the peacock, it probably spent its time eating fruit off the ground or using its long neck to grab food from higher bushes,鈥� he says.

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