"No Solnhofia individual with such completely preserved extremities has ever been described before," says Felix Augustin of the Biogeology working group at the University of Tübingen. The head and carapace of Solnhofia parsonsi are also clearly preserved. The beak is long and pointed, the head is triangular, and at just over nine centimeters long, measures almost half the length of the carapace.

"Solnhofia may have used its large head to crush hard food items such as shelled invertebrates, as we see in some modern turtles, but it does not mean these were exclusively forming its diet," says Márton Rabi of the University of Tübingen and co-author of the study, which has now published in the journal PLOS ONE.

The name Solnhofia refers to the limestone deposits of Solnhofen—a place located south of Nuremberg in the valley of the Altmühl. Famous fossils of one of the earliest birds, Archaeopteryx, and of many pterosaurs and marine reptiles have been found there.

The layers of the Solnhofen limestone, which are rich in fossils, run along the entire valley of the Altmühl. The fossil of Solnhofia parsonsi was found in a quarry in the Painten district west of Regensburg, where systematic digging for fossils has only been going on for about 20 years.