Some 167 million years ago over what is now Scotland’s Isle of Skye, a winged reptile, possibly as big as an albatross, soared over a subtropical lagoon, nabbing fish and squid in its toothy maw as dinosaurs thundered across the shorelines.

Somehow this reptile perished, and its carcass was quickly entombed in sediments on the bottom of that lagoon. In 2017 a chance discovery along Skye’s wave-battered coastlines revealed the resulting fossil: the best of its kind found in two centuries.

Unveiled today in the journal Current Biology, the fossil—called Dearc sgiathanach (pronounced “jark ski-an-ach”)—is spectacularly well preserved, with portions of the skull, limb bones, tail, ribs, and vertebrae still intact. The fossil joins elite company: Not many