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Like other pterosaurs, the Cryodrakon had awkward proportions with a long neck, huge wings and a head about 3 1/2 times the size of its body. As one expert said, imagine a “giant flying murder head.” Alternatively: “a pair of wings that carry around a big head for guzzling things.”

Researchers said that while the pterosaur’s new name was more inspired by Alberta’s frigid landscape than it was by “Game of Thrones,” they were aware that it might elicit some comparisons.

Photo by David MAAS / various sources / AFP

“Yes, we had a good, personal chuckle about that,” said Michael Habib, a paleontologist at the University of Southern California and a fan of the show.

François Therrien, curator of dinosaur palaeoecology at Alberta’s Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, noted that while modern-day Alberta is known for its harsh winters, the landscape that the Cryodrakon would have soared over in the late dinosaur age would actually have been a tropical paradise near to a large inland sea.

The fossils that were used to establish the Cryodrakon’s holotype — a single specimen upon which the new species is established — were discovered some 30 years ago in Alberta’s Dinosaur Provincial Park, known for being one of the richest sources of dinosaur fossils in the world. Until recently however, the remains were thought to belong to an already known species of pterosaur, called the Quetzalcoatlus, that was first found in Texas.

Habib, one of the few scientists in the world who has worked extensively with Quetzalcoatlus fossils, said that when he first saw the Canadian pterosaur four years ago, he had a hunch that it was not what he had seen before. While its neck bones were long like a typical Quetzalcoatlus, its proportions did not match.